Attempting to ridicule the whole Plame/Wilson Affair has now become a full time job for the Princess of Printers Ink. As she keeps asking, in post after post, "what was her real job" and saying "I just don't get it". Seems that the lass has taken the Mays Position, which if I understand it correctly, only requires that you be stupid enough to stand out in the rain and willingly pay big dollars for truck-stop couture, i.e. being oblivous to the obvious; you'll get wet while looking stupid in a cheap mesh cap and torn clothing. If Sully were a doctor ( a truly scary thought) and someone walked into his ER with a gunshot wound, would he treat them for a head cold...since he misses the obvious sooo well?

If it were any more obvious that the Plame affair were a scandal, we'd hire a skywriter to put it in the air over P-Town "they broke the law". Unfortunately, unless the pilot were a republican and the plane made only right turns while writing, I don't think Sully could read it. I guess that this doesn't rise to the level of oral sex, presumably a subject that she is an expert on, unlike say...journalism or even punditry?

Or maybe our lassie has just misunderestimated his hero, and this is the denial phase....nah.

If this snowball turns into an avalanche, it might be 'one and done' for ol' Commander Codpiece.

Americans are equally divided over President Bush's handling of the situation in Iraq, according to a Newsweek poll released Saturday. When asked whether they approved of Bush's stewardship in Iraq, 47 percent of respondents said "yes" and 46 percent "no." And 56 percent said the United States was spending too much money for operations in post-war Iraq, compared with 31 percent who said the spending was about right.

Seventy Million to investigate a stained dress, the meaning of "is" and a blowjob. How much will the 1600 Crew and Congress spend to find out who blew Valerie Plame's cover?

Right now, not a plugged nickel apparently.

So, here it is Monday morning and I'm sitting in the local bagel shop on the way to work enjoying a cuppa and a bagel (I'm pretty sure the guy who applied the shmear was sure that extra cream cheese was coming out of his paycheck...it's a BushEconomy Thing), when I see this story about Diploma Mills. Great way to make a living...if you run the Mill. So I read it and see that Sen. Susan Collins (who should really be a Democrat), is busting on them. Big Time. Well, that's pretty boring stuff...congresscritter, easy target...like shooting [something] in a barrel. Right. Oh no, it's waaay better. Seems that some over-paid under-qualified(?) Depity Departmint Hed at the Department of Homeland Security might be a certified Grad-U-Ate of a Diploma Mill (well, they're investigating, but given that it's on the list of Diploma Mills, I'd say her chances of vindications are, well, slim?)...and the Office of Personnel Management sees this whole situation as a problem (reeealy?).

Concerns about phony credentials have been mounting since June, when questions were first raised about the academic record of the Homeland Security Department's deputy chief information officer, Laura Callahan. She's on paid leave while the department investigates whether her degrees, including a Ph.D. from Hamilton University of Wyoming (which is not affiliated with Hamilton College in New York or similarly named colleges and universities), came from diploma mills.
...
Patients trusted Gregory Caplinger, who told them he was going to market a drug to treat AIDS and cancer. Investors trusted him, too, and gave him money for his venture. But while Caplinger claimed he had a medical degree from Metropolitan Collegiate Institute in Great Britain, an expert witness for the government testified that a medical degree from MCI could be bought for $100 with no study required, according to court documents. He said he was nominated for a Nobel Prize in medicine by a British hospital, which court documents say was merely a mail drop. The North Carolina man was convicted of six counts of wire fraud and two counts of money laundering, and was ordered to pay more than $1 million in restitution as part of his 2001 sentencing.

One couple gave him $30,000 and sought his advice about cancer treatments for family members. An actress who was HIV positive was treated at his clinic.

Isn't that what CEO (gag me) presidents do, surround themselves with really smart people? Well, there ya go!

Hey! Who checked out Instahacks J.D.? Just asking....

I sent this one out to the site too soon...so I Google Laura Callahan and DHS and come up with this:

Callahan will be the senior director of an office that will be in charge of management, policy and enterprise initiatives such as disaster management and Project SafeCom, a communications network linking first responders, Homeland Security Department CIO Steve Cooper told Federal Computer Week.
...
Callahan is the latest in a series of information technology executives to join the new department's CIO shop.

I feel more secure already...is the DHS Depity Director of guns'n'ammo just hired from a Pizza Delivery position?

Two Words: Fareed Zakaria. Interesting. These numbers are amazing and his premise is on the money...literally.

By Rumsfeld’s logic, America’s light hand and quick exit from Haiti should have created a vibrant democracy. The opposite happened.
...
As proof of this, Rumsfeld points out that “four years after the war, the United Nations still runs Kosovo by executive fiat, issues postage stamps, passports and driver’s licenses.” This is shockingly ill-informed. ...
...
It is not U.N. bureaucracy that has kept Kosovo in limbo, but a political dilemma that Washington has not resolved.
...
Rumsfeld should get out more. ...
...
Rumsfeld’s problem, it would seem, is not with international organizations, but with global capitalism.
...
One can see this phenomenon vividly in one country these days—Iraq. A senior international administrator—that is, a high-ranking civilian in the Coalition Provisional Authority or a one-star American general—makes around $10,000 a month, including housing allowances. The Pentagon estimates that doctors in Iraq made $20 a month last year. To be fair, local wages have risen now, but a university professor in Baghdad today makes at most $200 to $300 a month. In other words, a Coalition official is probably earning 50 times the salary of a local professor.

Is it any wonder that every president since Reagan tossed the Neocon proposals for invading Iraq into the shit-can until George the Weak-minded showed up? Don't you just picture him like the dog in that cat-centric comic...tongue hanging out, stupid smile on his face, always getting out-smarted by a lasagna-eating feline and everyone else? Wait...that's reality.

What's Eighty-Seven Billion dollars when every business deal you have ever touched has gone to hell in a handbasket? Never mind that President Goes AWOL but kills Soldiers can't balance his own checkbook, now he's looking to increase the debt my great-great-great granchildren will be paying off. Thanks, loser. But wait, seems that some republicans with a bit more common sense not to mention fiscal discipline are interested in trying to keep the Economy from doing the Titanic thing...

In what could be a major embarrassment for Bush and the GOP, some Republicans say there could be a close vote on an amendment by Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., paying the bill's costs by canceling some scheduled income tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans.

Bush and GOP leaders have refused to reconsider any tax reductions, arguing they are a pivotal part of the administration's plan to spark the economy.
...
Even if they lose, Democrats will be happy to get Republicans on record refusing to pay the bill's massive $87 billion price tag by rolling back tax cuts on people earning at least $360,000 annually.

Hmmmm...looks like we're all a bunch of nervous nellys about he potential for fraud in the balloting process. Everything will be OK, just trust the man behind the curtain; he'll deliver (oops) count your state's ballots as they are cast.

Among newer systems being implemented in California and elsewhere are touch-screen computer voting machines. But the computerized balloting that election officials long have touted as the wave of the future is under attack from scientists and computer experts who worry that computerized voting systems are vulnerable to tampering and manipulation that could easily go undetected.

"This could be something that compromises democracy," said David Dill, a Stanford University professor of computer science who researches security issues.

On the other side of the debate are election officials who see the worry as a natural, if exaggerated, reaction to change. They say tampering would require a huge, sophisticated plan and that there are plenty of safeguards to detect and protect against intrusions.
...
Apprehension about computerized voting has simmered for years, arising early on among the Internet fringe that feasts on conspiracy and paranoia. That current of distrust has drifted closer to the mainstream in recent months.

There's no hurry to bring a bad system on-line, except the perception that "old" is "bad". Perhaps. Except in the case of counting ballots. Or do we want to give up our democracy to rich guys who "guarantee Ohio" for President Bunnypants?

Well here's another success for the 1600 Crew to trumpet, another Tax Cut. Yes, that's right Americans are making less money now than ever before, which of course translates into...(drum roll) Lower Taxes!

Americans' average household incomes continued to decline in 2002, powering skeptics who believe the economic recovery isn't hitting home fast enough.

The nation's median household income, adjusted for inflation, declined 1.1 percent, to $42,409 in 2002, the Census Bureau reported Friday. Georgia's median household income dropped about 0.9 percent to $43,096 -- a $408 dip.

Why did we have to waste all those years having all that nasty prosperity stuff? That Bastard Clinton, he just strung us along...sumbitch.

The ranks of the "all-volunteer" army and guard are doing pretty well, thank you in terms of recruiting today. But could this be a sign of what's to come? After all, as folks start to wonder about the reasons for real war in Iraq, and it's mounting and unexplainable casualty counts and the 1600 Crews metaphorical War on Terra™ without real sacrifice (other than the occaisional son or daughter thrown in to the Maw of the Metaphor), we're all just doing ok. Okay?

Brian Moody signs up more soldiers for the Army National Guard than just about any other recruiter in Indiana. Across kitchen tables around the state, he has usually had an easy time convincing young people and their families that the military offers them what they want.

Until he met Jeff Fayette's mom.

"I came out of that house, and the dad had not said anything, and the mom said: `The people at work tell me you're trained to lie to me. My son is not fighting for anybody in Iraq. He's going to stay right here and he's going to be my baby,' " Moody said. "That's the kind of feeling we're up against now. I tell you, it's real easy to get depressed.
...
" `Aren't there enough older people, grown men, to send over to Iraq? You have to go after 17-year-olds?' " Couch recalled asking Moody. "We are a very patriotic family. But I'm not going to sign what I felt like might be my son's death warrant."
...
Military officials acknowledge that the retention numbers are somewhat deceiving. Straining to ensure it has enough troops to handle its commitments in Iraq and elsewhere, the Pentagon issued orders this year preventing tens of thousands of soldiers who are serving in Iraq, or have served there recently, from leaving military service until further notice. Now, the part-time soldiers are being asked to do more. This month the Army announced that about 20,000 reservists and National Guard troops stationed in Iraq would have to serve a full year from the time they arrived, extending their tours in some cases for as long as 11 months.

Note: re-edited for knuckleheaded writing. haste makes waste

When the Joseph Wislon/Valerie Plame affair broke, I half-jokingly suggested that Mark Kleiman, who had many detaiils of the story not only right (as time has begun to prove), he didn't even start out as a true believer. Mark was skeptical until events coalesced around only one reasonable solution... but was out there first and has continued to update the story in both a meaningful and web-centric way...meaning you don't get bored reading his work and it's to the point. To his crediit, Mark does attribute his first knowledge of the story to Kevin Drum at Calpundit, and while that may be true, Kevin has not kept up the level of detail that Mark has on a regular basis.

Here is a link to the Pulitzer Web Site and their award for Public Service. Get this one out and start sending in Nominations. Everything can be done electronically, including the forms and submisstions materials.

A Pulitzer for a Blogger? Maybe not this year (but we could hope), it sure would change the opinions of some MW's if they truly knew that a well written blog with no axe to grind, was willing to publish a truth they wanted to bury in exchange for a nickname or a ride on AF One.

This guy, Papa Pilgrim hates governments, bureaucrats, and non-Biblical injunctions. Oh, except for that $23,115 in Tax-Free dollars from the Alaska Dividend Fund. Bet he has a whole cabin full of NRA-loving, mini-republicans up there with him. Best quote from a Washington Lobbyist paying for this guys legal aide...

"This is a good family that simply does not know how to deal with bureaucracy," said Cushman, whose group is helping Pilgrim pay for a lawyer and is publicizing his legal problems on its Web site. "They did not knowingly break the law. You have to look into people's hearts."

Seems that some of Sullys readers are even less intelligent than I gave them credit for. Our Boy actually had to put instructions in his blog on how to change the screen colors from the default white-on-blue to black-and-white. Well, I guess it's true...Andrew Sullivan rots your brain and robs you of the ability to read and comprehend simple instructions printed in [blue] and white.

Charles Krauthammer wrote an ode to Kennedy (and all us war-hating libruls) in the Friday Post. Quiddity distills the Krauthammer piece down to nine words and phrases used by the mad doctor..so I decided I would see if I could use all nine in a post in the style (sort of) of CK...here goes:

It is absurd to believe that Krauthammer could write anything so disgraceful as to suggest that Ted Kennedy is bordering on derangement. I would not suggest that Dr. Frankenhammer is becoming unhinged from reality by suggesting that our Fearless Leader used the situation in Iraq for political advantage for it might strike some as being guilty of blinding Bush-hatred, a regional prejudice found now not just in blue states. The blustering sentiments shown by Krauthammer shows that he never saw the movie "Wag the Dog" or is too naive to believe that politicians are likely to do absurd things for their own ends. Like starting wars, just because. Surely the good doctor is becoming unhinged, losing it because he can't go participate in the Neocon Orgy of the wholesale slaughter of Iraqis, he really, really wanted to go and is now losing it every day since being rejected for a job killing in the name of his hero. Or he has become a traveler on the passage to pathology a subject he slept through in med school and now really wants to experience first-hand.

Why does the Post even publish that loon? Oh yeah, they are going for their Beobachter/Fox News Credentials, one column(ist) at a time...

Please, repeat that ten times...then go toss your cookies. Seems that they need to read that in Baghdad and the surrounding environs very, very carefully before making application for any helpful shit from the offices of Viceroy Jerry & Co.™

When grease-stained technicians at the Baghdad South power plant needed spare parts recently, they first submitted a written request to Bechtel Corp., the engineering firm given more than $1 billion in U.S. government contracts to fix Iraq’s decrepit infrastructure.
THEN THEY WENT to the junkyard.

They scoured piles of industrial detritus for abandoned items that could be jury-rigged into the geriatric plant, such as the hydraulic pump from a bulldozer that was used to restart a broken water condenser.

“Of course we’d like new parts,” sighed Ahmed Ali Shihab, the senior operations engineer. But he said repeated appeals to Bechtel and the U.S. military had not yielded any significant new equipment. “All we have received from them are promises,” he said.
...
“Restoring Iraq’s electricity is vital to our mission here,” said L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. civil administrator of Iraq.
       “It’s hard to exaggerate the impact of three decades of crippling under-investment by Saddam Hussein in Iraq’s infrastructure,” Bremer said in a recent interview. “He spent his nation’s money building palaces and weapons and his army, not funding the things people need to survive.”
...
... Yet the Bush administration’s initial reconstruction plan called for devoting just $230 million of a $680 million Bechtel contract to electricity system repairs. “The telltale signs were there,” said the American electrical engineer. “But either because of sheer carelessness or because the [U.S.] government didn’t want to reveal how expensive it would be, there was massive under-planning.”

It's no wonder that the rose-petal suppliers are having such a hard time keeping up with demand...they all love us! When the lights are not off.

Well, it was only a matter of time...The Poodle is about to get his butt handed to him after the Brits get done smacking it. Seems that the Brits are a little less willing to believe that their leaders are infalliable. Blair is apparently refusing to take the fact that there might have been a little boo-boo committed in the name of the British people in and around the area of Ancient Mesopotamia.

A Defiant Tony Blair will this week refuse to apologise for his government’s most controversial policies - including the Iraq war - and accuse unions and dissident MPs of blocking progress towards a fairer society.

The embattled Prime Minister will face down his growing army of critics at the Labour conference in Bournemouth with a bold declaration that he has no regrets.
...

A new crop of opinion polls last night cast further gloom over the Labour conference.

They showed that Labour’s popularity rating has slumped to its lowest levels since Blair became Labour leader in 1994, with one poll putting the party three points behind the Tories.
...
A Guardian survey of 108 of the 409 Labour MPs found that almost a quarter wanted him to go, and that more than two-thirds were strongly opposed to tuition fees.

A Mori poll suggested that half the nation wanted Blair to step down and an ICM poll for the News of the World suggested 64% of voters no longer trusted Blair.

When the Asia Times can figure out your weaknesses, and do everything but call you "stupid" to your face, it's time to rethink your strategery. No, really.

One of Rumsfeld's pet concerns is that the transformed US military must (and can) do more with less...
...
Then there is added concern about what happens if the Korean conflict flares up. Even though the chances of such an eruption are minimal at this time, the contingency planners of the Joint Staff at the Pentagon and the Pacific Command (PACOM) are required by the very nature of their job to be ready for it. The question, then, becomes: What kind of pressure would a Korean contingency put on the already highly stretched US forces all over the globe?.
...
...But this option may not be valid for too long in the wake of a study issued by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. That study states, "If the Pentagon stuck to its plan of rotating active-duty army troops out of Iraq after a year, it would be able to sustain a force of only 67,000 to 106,000 active duty and reserve army and Marine forces." It went on to add, "A large force would put at risk the military's operations elsewhere around the globe."
...
Bush is aware that any sharing of authority with the UN or with other nations is likely to jeopardize his own vision of what the post-Saddam Iraq should look like. The element of realism among the Europeans - and I also include the United Kingdom on this point - is such that they will have no objection in seeing the establishment of a moderate Islamic democracy in Iraq. However, there is little doubt that the Bush administration will have a difficult time accepting that proposition, since such an acceptance would come into serious conflict with its other major foreign objective - transformation of Muslim Middle East.

I think that the Asia Times analysis hits one point straight on... the 1600 Crew obsession with transforming the Middle East towards some as-yet-to-be announced ends. I think that the "end-of-times" folks like DeLay and his ilk are as much or more a part of this as the Neocons. It doesn't take much to influence the weak mind of President Does it For a Buck'n'change...just an expensive suit and a sincere line of bullshit. And he's in.

Wasn't the Debacle In Iraq supposed to be about freedom, peace, liberty, Jeffersonian Democracy etc? How many warbloggers with teeny brains out there declared solemnly that we were bringing an end to the imminent threat posed by the 45-minute threat to world peace that was Saddam Hussein? How much of the slowly declining fresh air in the world was, and still is being wasted by the 1600 Crew and it's apologists who want us to be believe their circular logic for invasion and conquest? Well, here's a little story about the Rooskies and Vlad the KGB Impaler, and well, Roosian oil...

Mr. Alekperov wanted American consumers to understand that they need Russian oil and that companies like his are ready to provide it. For the last two years, oil has become an increasingly powerful bond between the United States, the world's largest consumer, and Russia, among the largest producers.
...
People close to Mr. Putin and Mr. Alekperov said that they expected Mr. Putin to raise the question of protecting the Russian oil contracts with President Bush during their weekend meeting at Camp David.
...
There is a great deal of speculation in Moscow these days that Russia would agree to send troops to help the American-led coalition in Iraq if the Bush administration moved to protect Russian oil interests in that country, according to Russian businessmen. But a person with Mr. Putin's delegation who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that Mr. Putin would likely abide by what he has said all along: that Russia would only send troops if the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution authorizing such a step.

Mr. Alekperov said that he knew of no such quid pro quo of oil for Russian military help, but did not discount the possibility of Russian troops going to Iraq at some point. Sending troops, he said, "is a political question. But if oil contracts go through quickly, we would have lots of Russian oil specialists on the ground, and every country should be able to protect its own people."

Mr. Aleperov may not admit to knowing of such a 'quid pro quo' because that's more latin than President Murders Everyone for Oil actually knows, however he probably told Pootie-Poot: "You scratch my back, and I'll scratch mine".

In what's sure to bring the truth is stranger than fiction saying to the minds of the non-kool-aid drinking population, this has to be the strangest thing I have seen yet. Seems a distillery in Scotland was under surveillance for (get ready) Weapons of Mass Destruction. That's right folks, don't touch that dial...

A distillery manager has told of his amazement after learning that US spies hunting weapons of mass destruction had been monitoring his whisky plant.
...
"They said they had been monitoring our webcams because the process of making something very innocuous and pleasant is close to making weapons of mass destruction, apparently.

"We just think it is the funniest thing we have ever heard."
...
An agency spokesman was reported as saying the distillery's webcams were of "no official interest".

• The local spy brigade in the UK got really bored and was looking for the days that free tours are given;
• Someone at the agency in Fort Belvoir has way too much time on their hands and needs a real job; or
• This feed actually goes to the Bush Twins college dorm rooms, to let them watch a real-life version of "Follow that Booze" (apologies to FoodTV and Gordon Elliot).

Light posting tomorrow, the real world collides with fun...work calls, for a possible all-nighter adding a DS3 for the home office, if the ISP is ready.

On another note, I just noticed that I posted my 1000th entry (since I set up shop) yesterday, and had my 1000th comment since opening on my site here. I want to say Thanks to everyone who has stopped by, commented (or not) and been supportive. I appreciate the e-mails with articles/leads and look forward to the next X,XXX posts. Blogging been berry berry fun for me...and it keeps me from yelling at the TV wingnuts and scaring the dog.

Thanks again, EVERYONE.

See the post below, about Microsoft, then read this. Now that's pretty scary stuff. Wow.

The woman in Africa who was sentenced to stoning for alleged infidelity has been freed by the Shariah Apellate Court in that country. Amina Lawal's coviction was tossed because she was already pregnant at the time she was convicted.

The Shariah Court of Appeal ruled on Thursday that Amina Lawal's conviction was invalid because she was already pregnant when harsh Islamic Shariah law was implemented in her home province.
...
"It is the view of this court that the judgment of the Upper Shariah Court, Funtua, was very wrong and the appeal of Amina Lawal is hereby discharged and acquitted," judge Ibrahim Maiangwa said.

No one really wanted to know or remember that Ah-nold had done an interview with that bastion of journalistic integrity, Oui. Non. We really did not need to remember that once upon a time, Ah-nold was probably the pin-up boy in bathhouses world-wide. We never really cared. Still don't. But thanks to Darrell, we now remember more about the Sperminator than we ever really wanted to. To think, since Mappelthorpe passed away no one cared about pictures of Ah-nold. Now:

The reporter who uncovered the Monica Lewinski scandal claims a new scoop: full nude erotic photographs of Arnold Schwarzenegger taken by renowned gay photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.

Matt Drudge, on his Drudge Report, says that "voters have never seen an elected official in such detail."

Although copies of a benign nude photo of the bodybuilder-actor-politician that appeared in the 1970s publican After Dark have been circulating for months on the internet, the Mapplethorpe photos are reportedly "shocking".

In a world exclusive, Drudge reports that pictures so steamy they have been kept under lock at the New York Estate of Mapplethorpe who died in 1989.

Operatives with the Schwarzenegger campaign are reportedly rushing to ensure that pictures are not published.

For a million six, Darrell ought to at least get a set of autographed prints...ya think?

Almost Shorter Andrew Sullivan: I hate Saddam. He was a bad evil man. Now that his regime is over, tell me why we were wrong to get rid of him? Bother me not with facts about WMD's and alleged administration lies. Saddam was a bad evil man. I cannot use too many words to express loathing of Saddam and the anti-war liberals. Wesley Clark is a liar. Nine-Eleven.

Not really a post designed to elict big response, but this was several places around the Web today...

That headline almost says it all. Ease of use is a wonderful thing, designing something so flawed that script-kiddies with little conscience and a lot of spare time can bring down servers and send millions into panic-mode is not the best of things. I seem to have read somewhere that Mac servers/workstations and Novell servers have little-to-no problem with these viruses...

"The nature of the platform that dominates every desktop everywhere is such that its dominance, coupled with its insecurity, cannot be ignored and is a matter of corporate and national policy," said Dan Geer, a security consultant and chief technology officer of @Stake, a computer security company.

The article is interesting and makes a good point, both about the over-reliance on a single-source provider like Microsoft and how it has become a National Security issue by default.

If there were ever another reason to loathe President Babble-On, here it is: Shutting off funding for Women's Health Clinics because they provide reproductive rights/care information/services...or in Christo-FascistSpeak, Abortion Counselng and Services. Yes, that's right folks, your Presdential Pander Bear is on his knees, sucking up to the likes of Jerry, Pat and Franklin and all thier ilk, because, well his poll numbers suck (YAY!!!) and he needs to feel the love.

President Bush anti-abortion policy has forced family planning clinics in poor countries to close, leaving some communities without any healthcare, according to a report issued Wednesday.

Even faith-based clinics that promote abstinence -- in line with White House policy -- have had to close, according to organizers.
...
"You cannot separate HIV/AIDS, reproductive health and abortion," said Hillary Fyfe, who heads the Family Life Movement of Zambia, a faith-based group working with adolescents on sex education.

While her group does not promote abortion or even condom use, it does talk about the possibility, and that was enough to lose U.S. funding, Fyfe said. Three clinics in Lusaka closed this year.

"We taught natural family planning and abstinence until marriage," Fyfe said in an interview. Now her group will be unable to holds its workshops unless they can find alternative funding, Fyfe said.

The Hairy Thunderer is watching and is not amused...once again Genocide is being committed in the name of one of his relatives and that always makes him a bit cranky, I'm told...When y'all go to that big re-ward in the sky I heard that the light is really a TeeVee playing endless loops of "The Devil and Miss Jones". Enjoy.

In a stunning-only-to-the-1600 Crew session, the delegates to the UN did everything but openly heckle the Potomac Napolean today as he boldly went a-begging.

President Bush's appeal for greater financial and military support for the reconstruction of Iraq failed to elicit fresh pledges today as members of the United Nations demanded that the United States yield greater power to the U.N. and the Iraqis.
...
"Let us not place greater trust on military might than on the institutions we created with the light of reason and the vision of history," President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil said in a speech to the 191-member body moments before Bush delivered his remarks. "A war can perhaps be won single-handedly, but peace, lasting peace, cannot be secured without the support of all."
...
One U.S. official said the administration hoped that Bush's speech would at least persuade governments to provide more money for Iraq's reconstruction at a donors' conference to be held in Madrid next month. "The expectation is that we are not going to get a great number of troops to participate," the official said. "But we want them to provide funds at the donor conference and we will try to make that happen."

Oh, and if you need to leave an anonymous donation of a billion or so you happen to have laying around, just send it in a plain brown envelope to the following address:

Misapplication of Foreign Policy Divsion
c/o The Department of Hubris Department
1600 Pennsylvania Ave
Washington, DC

It's not tax-deductable though. Sorry.

Well it is, isn't it? A correspondant to the Queen of Mass asks him how come he is such a shill for the 1600 Crew, "such an apologist" for the "wannbe-dictator". A fair question, asked and not answered...directly. Instead in a subsequent post Sully wastes bandwidth congratulating three more Chickenhawks, Instahack, Hitchens and of course Tom Friedman, on their support for the war, and their 'brave' stands in the silencing of dissent.

Hats off to Glenn for helping bring critical mass to the obvious truth that the reports coming out of Iraq are too one-sided, too patently political, and far too gloomy.
...
That's not to say we shouldn't hear the bad news. It's just that it needs perspective. Tom Friedman has been splendid, I think, in getting exactly the right mix of optimism and concern.
...
Finally some perspective on those almost daily troop deaths which every media outlet plasters on the front-page. Things are slowly improving!

Let's see what "obvious truth" President Completely Incoherent trotted out today:

"Obviously, I think they're going badly for the soldiers who lost their lives, and I weep for that person and their family. But no, I think we're making good progress, he said.

Virgin Ben! We have found a new calling for you! A new teen 'mag' formatted bible has found a new niche to target...teenage girls. Okay, stop laughing. These are godly little lasses, who want their religion spoon-fed to them by a glossy magazine-cum-bible. No lung-irritating fire and brimstone of that nasty King James, that's like sooo 16th Century or what-ever...

It's called "Revolve: The Complete New Testament" and it's apparently racing up the Amazon.com sales charts -- whatever that means -- as it sucks up all the accoutrements of a teen fashion rag and rams them through the cute Christian grinder of humorlessness and sexual rigidity and homophobia, and regurgitates them as kicky dumbed-down slightly numb virginal tidbits of advice and admonition and, yes, Biblical storytelling.

Because apparently girls don't already have enough hollow dogma out there telling them what to do. Apparently they don't already face a large enough mountain of misinfo and scorn and sexual mixed messages, and not a single one of them telling them how to really tune into themselves, listen to their own unique voices, find their own sex and their own power and their own divine potency.

Nope. Instead they get this, a sweetly uptight, revisionist Bible cross-bred with a bad fashion magazine, full of Top-10 lists and quizzes and Q&As, telling them to "pray for a person of influence" every day and check the "godly" quotient of the boys they date, and that Jesus doesn't really like it when they wear, you know, thongs and sexy bras and low-slung jeans. Yep, that should clear things right up.

On the other hand, they might give the Virgin Ben an embedded column for counterpoint, for the sake of the Christo-Fascist Big Tent inclusiveness, writing missives from the Torah, if he can get that hip, Barbie-does-the-Bible riff down pat.

I think Kevin Smith needs to make Dogma II. But that's just me.

Somebody out there has been adding a smidgen of speed or something to wake up the SCLM boys and girls, or else the polish is finally starting to come off the turd...either way, I'm pretty happy. CBS does a little story on how the mysterious 'bidding' process for Iraqi post-war reconstruction contracts (the extent of the 1600 Crew's plannig for post-war Iraq apparently) somehow managed to land with firms who had friends in high places...

The U.S. will spend approximately $25 billion to repair Iraq by the end of next year - and billions will be needed after that.
...
Given all the taxpayer money involved, you might think the process for awarding those contracts would be open and competitive.
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But, as 60 Minutes reported last spring, the earliest contracts were given to a few favored companies. And some of the biggest winners in the sweepstakes to rebuild Iraq have one thing in common: lots of very close friends in very high places.

Even before the first shots were fired in Iraq, the Pentagon had secretly awarded Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root a two-year, no-bid contract to put out oil well fires and to handle other unspecified duties involving war damage to the country’s petroleum industry. It is worth up to $7 billion.

But Robert Andersen, chief counsel for the Army Corps of Engineers, says that oil field damage was much less than anticipated and Halliburton will end up collecting only a small fraction of that $7 billion. But he can't say how small a fraction or exactly what the contract covers because the mission and the contract are considered classified information.

But is political influence not unknown in the process? In this particular case, Anderson says, it was legally justified and prudent.

But not everyone thought it was prudent. Bob Grace is president of GSM Consulting, a small company in Amarillo, Texas, that has fought oil well fires all over the world. Grace worked for the Kuwait government after the first Gulf War and was in charge of firefighting strategy for the huge Bergan Oil Field, which had more than 300 fires. Last September, when it looked like there might be another Gulf war and more oil well fires, he and a lot of his friends in the industry began contacting the Pentagon and their congressmen.

“All we were trying to find out was, who do we present our credentials to,” says Grace. “We just want to be able to go to somebody and say, ‘Hey, here's who we are, and here's what we've done, and here's what we do.’”

“They basically told us that there wasn't going to be any oil well fires.”

Both Halliburton and the Pentagon believe Lewis is insulting not only the vice president but thousands of professional civil servants who evaluate and award defense contracts based strictly on merit.

But does the fact that Cheney used to run Halliburton have any effect at all on the company getting government contracts?

“Zero,” says Dominy. “I will guarantee you that. Absolutely zero impact.”

Sometimes I wish Buffy had not finished her last season...there are a few evil republicans out there who might need her tender ministrations, or at least be checked out for signs of incipient Vamprisim. One of those being Ralph Reed, former head of the Christo-Fascist Coalition, Reed now operates a "political consulting" bidness in Atlanta. I once flew on a United Flight from VA Beach to National, and sat right across the aisle from him and one of his little butt-boys. They had a newsmagazine open to an article on the Clintons and were guffawing over Hillary's outfit and shoes. Interesting. If I knew that I would not have gotten arrested and fired, I would most likely reached across the aisle and smacked the little worm. Anyhow, here's a little Ralph Reed info...

Everything Republicans have gained in the past decade is on the line next year, said Ralph Reed, southeastern regional chairman for President Bush 2004 re-election campaign.

"We are going to be in for the fight of our lives," Reed told the National Federation of Republican Women's convention Sunday. "This is going to be a national effort. We are going to have to go wherever and whenever to do what we have to do."
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"In a country that is more evenly divided than we have ever seen, there are two things that get voters across the ballot line: a quality candidate and grass roots," he said. "Let's rearrange our lives to knock on another door, give up another Saturday, man another phone bank."

Keeping the football metaphor alive (it is Monday night, after all) we get to see the goal posts getting shifted as our boy moves on down field, in one piece he zigs and zags through the awful Rubin and Sperling loving lefties who just want a better economy and (say) they don't care how it happens, as long as President Jobless Recovery isn't in charge. As he adriotly manuvers, always to the right (which might account for his record number of sacks) he finds that once again the goal posts have been moved...Wolfie, Yes Wolfie von Wolfowitz is moving the goal post for him, by contradicting his hero, "

"Iraq did have contacts with Al Qaeda," Mr. Wolfowitz insisted, momentarily silencing the audience with an accusation even President Bush now says is unsubstantiated. He added, "We don't know how clear they were."

So how many Fundie Neocons does it take to move a goal post, Yer Royal Highness? And don't you ever get tired running from sideline to sideline and never gettng any closer to scoring? I think all your GLBT friends have it right, after all, how many of them would suffer the fate of former Rep. Steven May, also a gay, conservative who was fired by the Club for Growth, just for being who he is? At the behest of "right-thinking Christo-Fascist morons" no less. I think he was even an Army Officer (Reservist or NG) booted under 'don't ask, don't tell'. Whoops, there go the goal posts again...so how do you keep your head from expolding again? Exactly?

In a rotten economy there will always be a pretty fair number of folks who will look to the military for a job, when they might not have otherwise considered it. Military service is not a bad thing, and I see the folks who are considering it as people who will eventually learn that there is a greater world beyond the borders of their hometown. The service can ultimately be a great equalizer.

The services are set to meet their goals for this fiscal year. Which given the situation in Iraq may or may not be a good thing for the Army and the National Guard. But right now all the service chiefs are trumpeting thier respective goal-filling success, and it all looks wonderful 'til you read this:

...Next month it (the Army -JF) is rolling out a 15-month enlistment option (the current minimum length for a tour is two years) aimed at college students, an increasingly important target group.
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Under a program started two months ago, the Army has raised its age limit for new recruits to 40 years old from 34, ...

Emmy Awards. Tonight? Guess so. Found the results on Yahoo. Who Cares? But I have to wonder about two things: When did they come out with a category for Reality Shows and how in the hell does another awards show get to be an Emmy-worthy nominee, much less a winner (Tony Awards).

I guess that all the awards show are pretty much a self-fulfilling trivialization and self-parody. I just never realized how bad it's gotten.

We now return to meaningful (?) blogging, and your regularly scheduled rantings.

So when the Crawford Village Idiot does go the UN on Tuesday, there really is only one benchmark for all the other countries to judge him by...his own words.

In an exclusive interview with Fox News' Brit Hume, Bush said he will declare in his speech Tuesday at the U.N. General Assembly that he "made the right decision and the others that joined us made the right decision" to invade Iraq.
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Asked if he was willing for the United Nations to play a larger role in the political developments in Iraq to get a new resolution, Bush responded, "I'm not so sure we have to, for starters."

But he said he did think it would be helpful to get U.N. help in writing a constitution for Iraq.

"I mean, they're good at that," he said. "Or, perhaps when an election starts, they'll oversee the election. That would be deemed a larger role." (emphasis added)
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The United States argues that U.N. resolution 1441, passed unanimously in November, provided sufficient authority for the U.S.-led war. That resolution threatened Baghdad with "serious consequences" if it failed to show it had handed over or destroyed its weapons of mass destruction.

"That's the resolution that said if you don't disarm there will be serious consequences," he said. "At least somebody (the United States) stood up and said this is a definition of serious consequences."

So, here I am wondering if the 1600 Crew can be further humiliated. Yup, hope so. As Commander Codpiece heads off to the UN on Tuesday (that's up North, Dorky) to beg where he once boasted, I sure think it would be funny if say the Ambassadors for the International Confectionary Alliance sent their administrative assistants and chauffers to sit in their seats in the big hall, and they all went to the Tavern on the Green for lunch...

President Bush stood before the United Nations General Assembly a year ago and pledged to unite the world against Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

Six months ago he went to war, almost alone, having failed in months of diplomacy to win explicit U.N. support.

Tuesday, he returns to the U.N. -- short of cash, short of troops and looking for help.

The question is how much he is likely to get from countries that opposed the Iraq venture from the start and that remain resentful of alleged American arrogance since.

I have to wonder if the world is going to look different from his knees, not that being there will do him much good...republicans are opposed to that on principle, remember?

Not my first source for (reliable) news, but this has been rumored for some time now. From Drudge:

FCC POWELL SETS STAGE FOR EXIT IN INTERVIEW: 'I HAVE A TIRED FAMILY, TIRED CHILDREN AND A TIRED SPOUSE'
-Michael Powell, America's Icon to Nepotism in Action

Good Riddance to bad Rubbish.

Been a little while since the Snake-Handling Prude got to go on the TeeVee and let us all know about the latest "threat" to America he's sent to the Navy Brig in Charleston SC. Seems this time, they have sent an Army Captain, who hmmmm, to no one's surprise is a Muslim and had been ministering to the prisoners on GITMO. This one takes the cake even for the 1600 Crew, and their usual paranoia. Captain Yee, the Chaplain is a 1990 West Point Graduate and a convert to Islam. He has been cited for the work he has done ministering to Muslim soldiers.

An Islamic chaplain in the United States Army who ministered to detainees at the camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where the military holds captured militants and suspected terrorists is now himself under arrest while the Army investigates his activities, military and law enforcement officials said today.
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Military officials declined to say why Captain Yee, a 1990 graduate of West Point who converted to Islam, was being investigated. But a civilian law enforcement official said that the investigation was aimed at suspicions of espionage, improperly assisting the prisoners or some other breach of military duties.
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Investigators are looking into the possibility that he was sympathetic to prisoners there and was preparing to aid them in some undetermined way.

"That's the fear and the suspicion that the Army is pursuing," the second law enforcement official said.
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Captain Yee was raised in Springfield, N.J. After graduating from West Point, he served on active duty as an air defense artillery officer, a military spokesman told The Associated Press. He left the Army in the mid-1990's and moved to Syria, the spokesman said. He returned to the United States and re-entered the Army as an Islamic chaplain.

So what's the deal with Captain Yee. Theoretically he has lots of rights, especially the military's 120-day speedy-trial thing. If a military court (should it get that far) doesn't find him guilty of anything, what's Asscrack going to do lock him up in perpetuity like Padilla and Hamdi? That's the style and the substance. It's a shame that the US Army, which is fighting so hard and valiantly to not make horses-asses out of themselves with moderate Muslims just managed to shoot themselves in the foot and provide rhetoric for anti-Muslim bigots and those who would follw the advice of Ann-Thrax.

The 30% of us who knew that the 1600 Crew was lying about everything can't say "I told you so" to the 70% who "knew" that the Chimp was "telling the truth" about the Iraq-al Qaida-9/11 connections. We don't want them to feel like we're being all superior. We just have to keep telling the truth, and hope that more stories in the media let the 70-percenters become disenchanted with the non-stop lying by the 1600 Crew 24/7/365.

Smile when you call the Chimp a Chump (or some other more "respectable"and less inflammatory name)...perhaps you'll convert one or two of the 70-percenters per try...just getting a few on board means less votes for the 1600 Crew Fascist State Creation Machine next November...and that's just a little bit of alright!

Apparently one of the members of the Chalabi Governing Council, who coincidentally was a woman was shot by (reportedly) six males in a pickup truck. Now it would be interesting to know if they were shooting at her for her gender and the perceived power she'll have as a council member, or simply because of her gender and the prevalent Islamic Fundamentalist view of women and their place in society.

Six gunmen firing assault weapons from a Toyota pickup truck chased a member of Iraq’s Governing Council in her car and seriously wounded her in the first assassination attempt targeting the U.S.-created leadership body. The brazen, daytime attack was against Aquila al-Hashimi, one of three women on the council, a Shiite Muslim and a strong candidate to become Iraq’s representative at the United Nations.
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Ahmad Chalabi, the president of the Governing Council fo