Just when you thought that the Christo-Fascist Wingnuttery could go no lower, a "delegate" to the Repulican Humpfest has been passing out Purple Heart band-aids. Talk about a disgrace. There are men and women today awarded that medal, some probably actually TODAY for the misadventure in Mesopotamia, and some chickenhawk ass has the gall to use that award, one no soldier wants to get to try and criticize John Kerry.

A GOP delegate handed out bandages with purple hearts on them Monday night at the Republican National Convention in a swipe at Democratic nominee John Kerry's war record, but national GOP officials have asked him to stop.
...
Blackwell, who gave out almost 250 of the bandages, said Vietnam veterans have every right to be angry about anti-war comments Kerry made after returning to this country.

Morton Blackwell’s Background:

In youth politics, Mr. Blackwell was a College Republican state chairman and a Young Republican state chairman in Louisiana.

He served on the Young Republican National Committee for more than a dozen years, rising to the position of Young Republican National Federation national vice chairman at large.

Off and on for five years, 1965-1970, he worked as executive director of the College Republican National Committee under four consecutive College Republican national chairmen.

He served on the Louisiana Republican state central committee for eight years.

He’s now in his 28th year on the Arlington County (Virginia) Republican Committee, his 15th year as a member of the Virginia Republican state central committee and his 14th year as Virginia’s Republican National Committeeman

Having worked actively in politics for more than forty years, he has probably trained more political activists than any other conservative. Starting in the 1960’s, he has trained thousands of people who have served on staff for Republican candidates in every state.

Mr. Blackwell was Barry Goldwater’s youngest elected delegate to the 1964 Republican National Convention in San Francisco.

He was a national convention Alternate Delegate for Ronald Reagan in 1968 and 1976, and a Ronald Reagan Delegate at the 1980 national convention.

In 1980, he organized and oversaw the national youth effort for Ronald Reagan.

He served as Special Assistant to the President on President Reagan’s White House Staff 1981-1984.

Mr. Blackwell is something of a specialist in matters relating to the rules of the Republican Party.

He served on rules committees of the state Republican parties in Louisiana and in Virginia. He serves now on the RNC’s Standing Committee on Rules and has attended every meeting of the Republican National Conventions’ Rules Committees since 1972. .

Why do allegedly patriotic, "Love or Shove it, My Amurka" republicans hate the military so?

Surfing around the other day, was somehow pointed to this page on FindLaw, which lists all the public links to John Kerry's service record and the service record of Preznit Two-Ribbon Codpiece.

Not just a little disparity in the numbers...

Asked "Can we win?" Bush said, "I don't think you can win it. But I think you can create conditions so that the -- those who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in parts of the world."

Just sayin'.

"I'm pretty sure he's an idiot, but a resiliant one"

Something we've all known all along...that Preznit Borrowed Fortitude was about as big of an idiot as could be hoped for from the Central New England Inbreeding and Substance Abuse Training Academy...

"I don't think you can win it," Mr. Bush replied. "But I think you can create conditions so that those who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in parts of the world."

As recently as July 14, Mr. Bush had drawn a far sunnier picture. "I have a clear vision and a strategy to win the war on terror," he said.

Who knew? The Christo-Fascists have made it all official...with the official pig-lipstick in place those fun-lovin' hooker-chasin' republicans have made it official as hell...if you're not like them: Go Away or we'll outlaw your ass.

Republicans approved a platform yesterday that puts the party firmly on the record against legalized abortion, gay marriage and other forms of legal recognition for same-sex couples, reflecting the political clout of social conservatives and setting up a stark contrast with the Democrats for the fall campaign.

The platform also hails President Bush's fight against terrorism, advocates making his tax cuts permanent and calls for the creation of personal investment accounts in Social Security as part of a new "ownership society'' that Republicans assert will give Americans more responsibility and control over their financial lives.

I guess that if you make less than $300,000 a year and aren't a donor to the 1600 Crew, "ownership" might soon take on a whole different meaning, eh?

I missed the opportunity to take some shots at the Countess of the Cape on the day of her coming out. Hence I missed the chance to wonder why she has been sooo late to the "I fought Iraq, and ... someone won (but there was some chicanery in there somewhere)" theme party that all the Saddam-bad hawks are now lining up to be part of.

The attempt to put Iraq back together again seemed to lose ground last month as well. ... At worst, the mess has deepened. Does anyone believe that the administration has a clear idea of how to rescue the situation? I see few signs of candor or clarity.

It's refreshing to see that the whole leopards/spots thing is still true. In one place her Majesty bemoans the whole Brown Water Ratfink affair as something that is just sooo beneath her hero

The low point was obviously the Swift Boat vets, jumping like bait on the end of Karl Rove's line. For a president who never served in Vietnam to get his cronies to lambaste an opponent who actually put his life in danger was, well, breathtakingly bold.

In all this, you can almost feel the election swinging Bush's way a little. The swift boat smear was important in jolting the conversation, in changing the dynamic that was pointing to a Bush defeat.

Interestingly, there's a great throwaway line...

I felt relieved to be absent with leave.

If there were not such a gang of criminals and thieves in congress, one would almost think this might be seen as the proverbial "smoking gun" in the Abu-Ghraib scandal and they might start an investigation. Sadly, No!

Other such documents cited by officials who participated in the two probes include a December 2002 memo signed by Rumsfeld that authorized harsh interrogation methods for prisoners at Guantanamo, and a controversial Feb. 7, 2002, memo signed by President Bush that declared that fighters detained in Afghanistan were not entitled as a matter of law to the protections afforded by the Geneva Conventions.

The Rumsfeld memo included authorization for the use of dogs; the Bush memo was cited by legal advisers to Sanchez as the basis for their determination that some Iraqi detainees were not entitled to the full legal protections provided by the Geneva Conventions, according to the independent panel. This "confusion" between interrogation rules devised for use at Guantanamo and Afghanistan and the protections mandated by international law in Iraq contributed to some of the abuse, according to the Army report's executive summary. (emphasis added)

The 1600 Crew is going to have to look into taking away Mrs. Vehicular Homicide's happy pills for the next couple of months. Asked about the Brown Water Ratfinks, Hump-A-Lump said:

TIME
Do you think these swift-boat ads are unfair to John Kerry?

BUSH
Do I think they're unfair? Not really. There have been millions of terrible ads against my husband.

Some type of pharmaceuticals has to be the explanation for such a bald-faced assertion by such a non-entity about a man who has won the nations third-highest medal for bravery in combat. While her pathetic husband was probably drunk and being abusive towards New Haven Police officers.

Well, it's started...with VP Crashcart making shit up as per republican SOP. And he's already got the Media Whores on their back for him.

Vice President Cheney launched the Republican convention Sunday in a speech hailing President Bush's war leadership, as more than 200,000 demonstrators took to the streets here in protest of the Bush administration's policies.

Remember kids, he's a bold leader with a huuuge codpiece and he's all ours! Hopefully not for much longer.

The new interrogation and prisoner treatment methods at Abu Ghraib are looking like they probably should have last year...but it took criminal conduct, major embarrasment of he military and pointing out the idiocy of the 1600 Crew to begin a more "professional" approach to gathering intelligence, if there is any to be gathered.

Now, military and civilian interrogators who have long relied on the element of surprise and fear of the unknown find themselves having to explain their methods.
...
Interrogations at Abu Ghraib are conducted in a row of plywood booths, each furnished a little differently. One booth was outfitted with two plush velvet chairs resembling thrones and a red, flowered carpet.

Apologies to the Pythons.

Of all the things to watch, one of the most amusing has to be the republicans trying to shed the racist-homophobe-white bread Christo-Fascist image they have so carefully built over the last few years as they try and "reach out" to be "inclusive". Diligent Dick the Party Man allowing that the States might be OK signing anti-gay marriage laws into being 'steada messing with the constitution; scientists actually getting to say that, yeah, there might be some science to the whole global warming thing. Not a single wing-nut speaker in prime-time; the attack dogs have muzzles and short leashes. And Preznit Free Speech Zone will make an appearance for about eight minutes then head off to the next part of the Fleece America Tour '04.

The best part of the whole thing? Watch the Log Cabin Republicans.

Some activists sharply criticized their party for adopting a hard line in advance of a convention that will seek support from swing voters and more liberal Republicans.

"You can't craft a vicious, mean-spirited platform and then try to put lipstick on the pig by putting Rudy Giuliani and Arnold Schwarzenegger on in prime time," Christopher Barron of the Log Cabin Republicans, a GOP gay-rights group, said in an interview.

It's amazing that there are two things that happened over the last three years, neither of them good and hopefully both will be over soon...and we can fix one by fixing the other...what might that be?

The number of Americans living in poverty and without health insurance rose for the third straight year in 2003, the Census Bureau reported Thursday in a pair of reports that delivered a double dose of bad economic news for the Bush administration.

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry said the reports demonstrate the administration's failed economic policies. President Bush's supporters said the numbers don't reflect more recent economic gains, including the addition of 1.5 million jobs in the last year.

So for three years the lot of more and more hard-working, trusting Americans has been getting worse, and for three years there has been an adiminstration appointed to office that could actually give a shit about that. Man, that's so coincidental, it's downright scary.

The country can't stand another three months of the 1600 Crew and Preznit Economic Disaster...by the time he's done with us there won't be middle-class or any other class but the plutocracy left...what a catastrophy.

John Kerry at least has a clue and a willingness to listen to solutions, and begin restoring our country. Preznit Credit Crunch has no clue. How much clearer choice could there be? If a rising tide lifts all boats, there are a whole lot of folks who must feel like they hit the iceberg over the last 36 months.

Dahlia Lithwick:

This week's report by the James Schlesinger panel offers the closest thing we'll get to a smoking gun. Connect the dots and it's all there: the sadism at Abu Ghraib stemmed from "confusion." Confusion sounds accidental - like maybe it just blew in off the Atlantic - but the report is clear that this confusion resulted from systemic failures at the highest levels. The report faults ambiguous interrogation mandates, an inadequate postwar plan, poor training and a lack of oversight. It notes that much of this confusion stemmed from the Bush administration's posture that the Geneva Conventions applied only where the president saw fit, and that the definition of "interrogation" was up for grabs at Guantánamo Bay, thus possibly at Abu Ghraib.

Or you can put your ear right up to the horse's mouth, where - even before the Schlesinger report - Mr. Rumsfeld owned the blame. "These events occurred on my watch. As secretary of defense, I am accountable for them and I take full responsibility," he told the Senate Armed Services Committee last May. But we live in an era when such words are intended to signify simultaneous culpability and absolution.

Especially Decorated Vietnam Veterans running for President. For instance.

And then there's this thought:

The ranking terrorists we do catch? They disappear into yet more law-free zones for further interrogation. The same intelligence-at-any-price culture that led us to Abu Ghraib keeps the real terrorists from ever being held to account.

Pretty good...why isn't this in the WaPo?

New federal rules will ace some 6 million workers out of the overtime pay to which, until now, they have been entitled by law, according to AFL-CIO calculations. Or they will bring a million-plus low-wage workers into overtime eligibility that they have been denied, as the Bush administration sees it.
...
But if you think this is an administration that would set out to do workers a great big favor and pester employers' bottom lines, you ought to check your zip code. It may be time for you to move back to Earth.

Granted, it is a distinctly novel re-election ploy to cut the take-home of millions and expect to profit politically. But then the Bush White House has more than its share, not only of testosterone, but of chutzpah. (As in that term's classic example: the guy who murders his parents and pleads for mercy as an orphan.)

Damn, it's election season and the 1600 Crew is above playing politics with nothing. As I recall, they have opposed findings which sound a lot like this, but letting this go to press with a DIFFERENT spin lets Preznit Ecological Disaster sound sort of ... tree-huggerish. Added to a presidential campaign speech drinking game, this one might get you hungover before election day...

In a striking shift in the way the Bush administration has portrayed the science of climate change, a new report to Congress focuses on federal research indicating that emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases are the only likely explanation for global warming over the last three decades.

In delivering the report to Congress yesterday, an administration official, Dr. James R Mahoney, said it reflected "the best possible scientific information" on climate change. Previously, President Bush and other officials had emphasized uncertainties in understanding the causes and consequences of warming as a reason for rejecting binding restrictions on heat-trapping gases.

I always thought that when you told the truth, you didn't need a lawyer...if the Brown Water Ratfinks were 100% truthful, why would they need an attorney? And especially one who makes a buck or two off the 1600 Crew?

A lawyer for President Bush's re-election campaign disclosed Tuesday that he has been providing legal advice for a veterans group that is challenging Democratic Sen. John Kerry's account of his Vietnam War service.

Benjamin Ginsberg's acknowledgment marks the second time in days that an individual associated with the Bush-Cheney campaign has been connected to the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which Kerry accuses of being a front for the Republican incumbent's re-election effort.

The Bush campaign and the veterans' group say there is no coordination.

One of the most observed, and least commented on things is that Chuck Colson is involved in this in some way...it smacks of the "dirty tricks" of Nixon, refined by Atwater and perfected by Unka Karl. It was after all, Felonious Chuck who introduced John O'neill to all the major players one way or another. Maybe Chuck just wants a little payback for all that time in the Big House and the Felony rap sheet.

Does this mean bye-bye Crashcart? Either the 1600 Crew has decided that the whole gay-marriage thing is a non-starter and is willing to kiss off the issue, despite losing their Christo-Fascist base or Crashcart is going to bow out from the ticket as a September Surprise at the convention.

Vice President Cheney on Tuesday spelled out his differences with President Bush on the volatile issue of same-sex marriage while for the first time discussing the sexual orientation of his gay daughter in a public setting.

Asked his position on the subject at a town hall meeting in Davenport, Iowa, Cheney replied: "Lynne and I have a gay daughter, so it's an issue that our family is very familiar with. . . . With respect to the question of relationships, my general view is that freedom means freedom for everyone. People ought to be able to free -- ought to be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to."
...
The Family Research Council, a conservative group with close White House ties, called Cheney's remarks disappointing. "Unfortunately, protection of our values is made more difficult when mixed messages emanate from the White House," said Tony Perkins, the group's president.

The Duchess is probably having a 24-hour whack-a-thon over this "new" Dick position.

Well, it's not like anyone in Left Blogtopia hasn't been saying this for oh, say, Three and a Half years...

Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's leadership of the Pentagon has been weighed by a jury of his peers and found somewhat wanting.

But the report does not appear to threaten Rumsfeld's position as defense secretary, especially because all four panel members emphatically rejected the idea of calling for his resignation yesterday at a Pentagon news conference to release their conclusions.

Coming up: Auntie Donnie's impassioned plea on Faux News Sunday that the Clenis™ made him do it. I just can't wait.

I don't have Lexis/Nexis, I am not a reporter for a Major Metropolitan Newspaper. I'm not even Superman.

But I can remember details of most major stories. Howard Kurtz obviously can't.

You think the average swing voter worried about next week's paycheck is spending a whole lot of time thinking about whether John Kerry was or was not under enemy fire when he pulled a Navy crewmate from the Bay Hap River in 1969? (my emphasis)

Mr. Rassmann, a retired lieutenant with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, served with the U.S. Army 5th Special Forces Group in Vietnam 1968-69.

Idiot.

Interesting story, via yoyogurl:

He’s 57 years old, afflicted with skin cancer, partially deaf and suffers from high blood pressure. But the U.S. Army still wants Master Sgt. Luis Jaime Treviño.

On July 14, the Vietnam and Desert Storm veteran received his third order to report to active duty — mobilized for Operation Iraqi Freedom.

"I was very shocked," Treviño said, a member of the Army’s Individual Ready Reserve. IRRs are not part of a reserve unit, do not get paid and do not attend monthly reserve training. However, because of critical skills they possess, they can be recalled to duty if needed.

In disbelief, he called the Army hotline listed on his orders.

"Am I reading this thing right? At my age you still want me?" he asked.

But there was no mistake. Treviño is to report to a mobilization unit Sept. 15 at Fort Jackson, S.C. "If I do not execute these orders, I go to jail," he said.
...
Reservists under the age of 60 are being activated, said Public Affairs Specialist Julia Collins of the Human Resources Command in St. Louis.

"I know many guys who are in that position," she said. "It’s not unusual."

While Treviño’s age does not disqualify him from serving, his medical condition may.

The U.S. Veteran’s Administration considers Treviño 100 percent disabled because of the cancerous cells on his face and his bilateral hearing loss.

His middle left finger is bandaged, hiding the portion doctors removed on Thursday for a biopsy. He also takes medicine daily to control his blood pressure and hypertension.

"Treviño is a refueling specialist, an expert in petroleum, oils and lubricants."

The closer it gets to the 30th, and the Christian-Coalition Humpfest in NYC where they'll annoint their Tax-Cut Messiah, the more I've been thinking about how any act of civil disobedience which involves police, mace and handcuffs will be used by the republi-clones to attempt to tar Kerry with a bad rap.

Mr. Bush's advisers said they were girding for the most extensive street demonstrations at any political convention since the Democrats nominated Hubert H. Humphrey in Chicago in 1968. But in contrast to that convention, which was severely undermined by televised displays of street rioting, Republicans said they would seek to turn any disruptions to their advantage, by portraying protests by even independent activists as Democratic-sanctioned displays of disrespect for a sitting president.

No Violence, No Shouting, No being adversarial, just a silent protest of the failed policies of this group of criminals who are ruining our Republic.

Pass it on, maybe someone will listen.

Bob Dole, who wants to be the either the Grand Old Man of GOoPerville, or in what's-her-name's pants (or both) has to be one of the biggest political whores of all time; he was when he was in Congress, and he still is. He's in Crawford, probably supervising Preznit Dummer'n'Dogshit taking them little blue pills so's he can do to Laura what he's been doing to America, and Bobby Fossil-Face comes out with this:

Former Republican Sen. Bob Dole suggested Sunday that John Kerry apologize for past testimony before Congress about alleged atrocities during the Vietnam War and joined critics of the Democratic presidential candidate who say he received an early exit from combat for "superficial wounds."
...
"One day he's saying that we were shooting civilians, cutting off their ears, cutting off their heads, throwing away his medals or his ribbons," Dole said. "The next day he's standing there, 'I want to be president because I'm a Vietnam veteran.'

In a 1988 campaign-trail autobiography, here's how Dole described the incident that earned him his first Purple Heart: "As we approached the enemy, there was a brief exchange of gunfire. I took a grenade in hand, pulled the pin, and tossed it in the direction of the farmhouse. It wasn't a very good pitch (remember, I was used to catching passes, not throwing them). In the darkness, the grenade must have struck a tree and bounced off. It exploded nearby, sending a sliver of metal into my leg--the sort of injury the Army patched up with Mercurochrome and a Purple Heart." (via Kos)

Preznit No Idea keeps talking about 527's. At first I thought he was referring to his total number of original ideas since birth, but that would be too high; then to the number of times he's gotten laid since his nuptuals with Mrs. Hump-a-Lump, then it dawned on the that he's referring the Not-so Swift Liars...and everyone else who might be supporting any candidate for President. The story in the Washington Post makes it sound like Fearless Leader is coming out against the Brown Water Ratfinks, but what they are reporting as news is the same thing that the somewhat brain-dead McClellan has been saying for days when asked by the media whores if Preznit Bible Thumper will disavow the BW Ratfinks...

CRAWFORD, Texas, Aug. 23--President Bush said his Democratic opponent, John F. Kerry, served honorably in Vietnam, but he would not specifically criticize ads by a group of veterans disparaging Kerry's military service.

"I think Senator Kerry served admirably and he ought to be proud of his record," Bush said, "but the question is who's best to lead the country in the war on terror." The president said "we ought to be looking forward not backward."

Maybe 527 is over counting in the brain-cell department.

Retired AF Chief of Staff, Tony McPeak took a whack at Preznit Luvs the Liars today:

Battling attacks on presidential candidate John Kerry’s war record, Democrats today will begin running a television ad in Oregon and 20 other states featuring former Republican and retired Air Force Gen. Merrill McPeak of Oregon.

Republicans responded to the new ads and Kerry’s increased criticism of President Bush by accusing the Massachusetts senator of “losing his cool” regarding claims that Kerry lied to win military medals in Vietnam.

McPeak, who lives in Lake Oswego, said that Kerry has a “real strategy to make America safer” and would be a better leader than President Bush.
...
“Nothing is more important to me than protecting America,” says McPeak, a fighter pilot in Vietnam who rose to leadership in the Persian Gulf War in 1991. “John Kerry has the strength and common sense we need in a commander in chief.”

McPeak, the Air Force chief of staff under the first President Bush and President Clinton, told reporters Friday that he had been impressed with Kerry’s toughness and integrity in his official dealings with him through the years.

Tracey Schmitt, a spokeswoman for the Bush-Cheney campaign, would not comment about the McPeak ad.

McPeak said he broke with the president regarding the war in Iraq.

“What I’m against is amateur hour (in Iraq) — the sloppiness in the postwar phase,” he said.

As the National Guard and Reserve sits in Iraq, essentially watching their lives and in some cases livliehoods get pissed away by the Neocon Nothings, there are real issues, real problems and real needs for them here in America. Consider the recent hurricane...

Failing grades go to: 1. FEMA, the government loan people. 2. John Ellis Bush (Jeb, the corporate governor of Florida). 3. The untrained and unequipped remnants of the Florida National Guard. 4. George Walker Bush, the non-elected and appointed U.S. President. 5. Recycling firms who are stealing aluminum siding from destroyed mobile homes. 6. Those selling bags of ice for $10. 7. Thieves from Miami taking personal belongings from demolished homes. 8. Those thieves demanding money up front to file fake insurance claims.
...
Considering most of the trained and experienced personnel and modern equipment from the Florida National Guard are now in the Middle East, Jeb Bush dared to send us antiquated equipment that broke down on I-75 driven by untrained personnel who have no idea what to do. Worse is that there were no water purification trucks (erdilators) sent, just old water tankers and old communications and storage trailers. It was a circus show and a true military cluster puck. There is no Florida National Guard. All the necessary equipment we need is sitting in Iraq or Kuwait right now.

the republicans made this statement concerning Democratic protests at their Choreographed Convention in the City:

...Republicans said they would seek to turn any disruptions to their advantage, by portraying protests by even independent activists as Democratic-sanctioned displays of disrespect for a sitting president.

Hypocrites thy name is republican...or something like that.

Atrios has the text of John Kerry's remarks to the senate all those years ago. Excerpted are some paragraphs that ring so true today...

In our opinion, and from our experience, there is nothing in South Vietnam which could happen that realistically threatens the United States of America. And to attempt to justify the loss of one American life in Vietnam, Cambodia, or Laos by linking such loss to the preservation of freedom, which those misfits supposedly abuse, is to us the height of criminal hypocrisy, and it is that kind of hypocrisy which we feel has torn this country apart.
...
Each day, to facilitate the process by which the United States washes her hands of Vietnam, someone has to give up his life so that the United States doesn't have to admit something that the entire world already knows, so that we can't say that we have made a mistake. Someone has to die so that President Nixon won't be, and these are his words, "the first President to lose a war."

We are asking Americans to think about that, because how do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?
...
We are here to ask, and we are here to ask vehemently, where are the leaders of our country? Where is the leadership? We're here to ask where are McNamara, Rostow, Bundy, Gilpatrick, and so many others? Where are they now that we, the men they sent off to war, have returned? These are the commanders who have deserted their troops. And there is no more serious crime in the laws of war. The Army says they never leave their wounded. The Marines say they never even leave their dead. These men have left all the casualties and retreated behind a pious shield of public rectitude. They've left the real stuff of their reputations bleaching behind them in the sun in this country....

I knew Teddy Kennedy was a bit more low-profile these days, but this is ridiculous...it's almost as if it were a 1600 Crew conspiracy or something.

The meeting had all the hallmarks of an ordinary Congressional hearing. There was Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, discussing the problems faced by ordinary citizens mistakenly placed on terrorist watch lists. Then, to the astonishment of the crowd attending a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Thursday, Mr. Kennedy offered himself up as Exhibit A.

Between March 1 and April 6, airline agents tried to block Mr. Kennedy from boarding airplanes on five occasions because his name resembled an alias used by a suspected terrorist who had been barred from flying on airlines in the United States, his aides and government officials said.
...
...the airline agents acted as if they had stumbled across a fanatic who might blow up an American airplane. Mr. Kennedy said they refused to give him his ticket.

"He said, 'We can't give it to you'," Mr. Kennedy said, describing an encounter with an airline agent to the rapt audience. " 'You can't buy a ticket to go on the airline to Boston.' I said, 'Well, why not?' He said, 'We can't tell you.' "
...
In Mr. Kennedy's case, airline supervisors ultimately overruled the ticket agents in each instance and allowed him to board the plane. But it took several weeks for the Department of Homeland Security to clear the matter up altogether, the senator's aides said.

Just days after Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge called Mr. Kennedy in early April to apologize and to promise that the problems would be resolved, another airline agent tried to stop Mr. Kennedy from boarding a plane yet again. The alias used by the suspected terrorist on the watch list was Edward Kennedy, said David Smith, a spokesman for the senator.

It's even funnier (and scarier) that a sitting Senator gets treated like this, apologized to by the Knucklehead-in-Charge of the Insecurity Department and then it happens again.

If it happened to any of us, what are the chances of any remediation? I guess that we'd all be getting used to long-distance drives and never going overseas unless it's by kayak or something. Unbelievable...

Is anyone who is awake shocked by this? The mans father studied with Ayatollah Khomeni and was one of his supporters. If Sadr is killed in the fighting, he's an Instant Martyr, and a highly visible symbol of resistance to the Occupation.

Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi issued a "final call" on Thursday for Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada Sadr to end his rebellion by agreeing to a new set of conditions issued by the government. Sadr responded by rejecting one of the government's two key demands, increasing the prospect of an intensified military attack against his militia.

With the RNC just around the corner, and the elections soon to follow, Allawi may soon find himself the lonliest guy on earth, or a Shah-type fugitive or even sharing a cell with Saddam.

Have to stay tuned...

I can just hear the immortal Gomer Pyle now .... doing his hillbilli-esque "surprize" thing. Can you just see him right there in Sensitive Dick's face going on and on about this?

The Bush administration is facing growing criticism from both inside and outside its ranks that it has failed to move aggressively enough in the war of ideas against Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda and other Islamic extremist groups over the three years since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
...
"It's worse than failing. Failing means you tried and didn't get better. But at this point, three years after September 11, you can say there wasn't even much of an attempt, and today Arab and Muslim attitudes toward the U.S. and the degree of distrust in the U.S. are far worse than they were three years ago. Bin Laden is winning by default," said Shibley Telhami, a member of a White House-appointed advisory group on public diplomacy and Brookings Institution scholar.

Shitfire, to compete with Al-Qaeda Preznit Barely Intelligent offered all the Arabs a Tax Cut. He's still waiting for an answer apparently...

The judge in the Wen Ho Lee civil trial has held a few of the "reporters" who flogged the "scandal" to death in contempt. Unsurprisingly one is Jeff Gerth, of Whitewater fame. Gene Lyons take on Jeff Gerth (via the Incomparable Daily Howler archives):

...and then in Fools for Scandal, Lyons charged that Gerth and some writers at the Washington Post had essentially “invented” the Whitewater story, and he accused Gerth of an assortment of specific misdeeds--in particular, of “suppressing or ignoring hard evidence” that would have shown what was wrong with Gerth’s Whitewater case.

... At one point, Jackson calls Gerth's statement in depositions that he could not recall some of his confidential sources "not credible." He also rejected an argument from attorneys that the subpoenas effectively punished reporters for publishing information they lawfully obtained.

Well, it is in JEB's! Florida, but still it's sad to see this kind of thing.

Greg Lawrence talks about the $10 bag of ice. Kenneth Kleppach says he was clipped for nearly three times the advertised price for a hotel room. And a man with a chain saw told Jerry Olmstead that he could clear the oak tree off his roof, but it would cost $10,500.
...
Charlie Crist, Florida's attorney general, said Tuesday afternoon that he had received more than 1,400 complaints of overcharging from throughout the disaster area. This morning he filed formal complaints against the Crossroads Motor Lodge in Lakeland and the Days Inn Airport Hotel in West Palm Beach, accusing them of price gouging and deceptive business practices.

With the 1600 Crew (South) No Dollar is Left Behind. Ever.

If you were a multi-zillion dollar, multi-national conglomerate, whose former leader were now VP of the US of A I guess that you'd just come to expect the words "special treatment" would apply to you. I'm pretty sure that CheneyBurton does...

Only hours after deciding to withhold some payments to Halliburton Co. because of questions about billing for its work in Iraq, the Army reversed itself yesterday and said it would give the giant contractor more time to justify its claims.

The decision capped two days of confusion over whether the Pentagon would withhold 15 percent of payments to Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root Inc. under federal procurement rules that require contractors to provide clear justification for their bills.

After all, when you have a multi-billion dollar no-bid sweetheart contract, you have to protect your interests at all cost, right? Damn pesky gubmint wanting all that nasty accountability stuff. And rules? Why they're for companies that have no friends in the administration. You can take that to the bank.

I'll give this guy credit for having balls you need to cart around in a wheelbarrow, but I'm not so sure I'd want to be him when/if he loses this...

A member of the California Army National Guard filed suit in federal court here Tuesday challenging the Bush administration's so-called stop-loss policy, asserting that his pending deployment to Iraq "bears no relation to the threat of terrorism against the United States."

Under stop-loss, military personnel are prevented from leaving the armed forces upon completing their enlistment terms. The plaintiff in this case, identified as John Doe to protect his privacy, is believed to be the first soldier to challenge the legality of the policy's application to deployment in Iraq.

The soldier is described in the suit as a sergeant from the San Francisco Bay Area who completed more than nine years of active service in the Army and the Marine Corps, including combat duty last year in Iraq. He then joined the California Army National Guard last December, the suit says, under a program that allows veterans to enlist for one year. On July 6, however, he was informed that his enlistment had been extended by two years and that his unit was mobilizing for duty in Iraq, the suit says.

A worthy effort, one to watch. Best of luck to the Sergeant...

Given the absolutely fabulous job that the 1600 Crew has done in Iraq, are we seeing the 'release' of Ayatollah 2.0? Obviously Sadr thinks that he can either just wait out the "interim" government or he's got something else up his sleeve. His "dis" of the representatives of the US-installed puppet regime speaks volumes to where his head is, and it's not in giving up any time soon...

Rebellious cleric Moqtada Sadr on Tuesday rebuffed a delegation of Iraqi political leaders seeking a face-to-face meeting to persuade him to disband his militia and vacate a large Shiite shrine here, increasing chances of intensified U.S. and Iraqi military action to evict him and his followers.

The eight-member delegation, led by a senior cleric who is a relative of Sadr's, crossed a U.S. military cordon and braved nearby gun battles to reach the gold-domed Imam Ali shrine, one of Shiite Islam's holiest sites. The group's goal was to forge a deal with Sadr to end a potentially destabilizing confrontation and convert his militia into a political organization that would take part in elections.

Just another example of the fine, fine post-war planning by the 1600 Crew morons.

Shades of Tricky Dick. Looks like the GOopers want no untoward, scruffy-looking commie dissenters in New York.

Federal agents and city police are keeping tabs on people they say might try to cause trouble at the Republican National Convention, questioning activists, making unannounced visits and monitoring Web sites and meetings.
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“We’re not engaging in surveillance of groups or individuals without legal predication,” said Jim Margolin, spokesman for the New York office of the FBI.

Deja Vu all over again.

Just when you thought that they might have learned their lessons, and quit fucking around with things that they don't understand, the Neocons do it again...this time with the "redeployment" of troops back to the US. The 1600 Crew is saying that this will give the troops more time at home...sure, between deployments back to where they were stationed overseas. It's a serious Catch-22 being sold by a bunch of guys whose closest association with military service was watching Bill Murray in "Stripes".

President Bush's plan to restructure U.S. military forces abroad includes bringing two Army divisions home from Cold War-era bases in Germany, and increasing the U.S. presence at bases in countries like Poland, Romania and Uzbekistan, Pentagon officials said Monday.
...
The moves are meant to give the military greater flexibility and a quicker reaction time to deal with the smaller military engagements that Pentagon planners foresee during the war on terrorism and beyond.
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"Our service members will have more time on the home front, and more predictability and fewer moves over a career," Bush said.

However, stepped-up use of training bases overseas could mean more short-term rotations for troops as their families remain in the United States. And some U.S. civilian and contract workers at shuttered European bases would lose their jobs, the Pentagon officials said.

Clark said increased overseas training would put further strain on a military already stretched thin by Iraq and Afghanistan.

I guess being a deserter and coward means never having to say you're sorry.

Simply Marvelous.

ARPC was looking at the record of a deserter, whose desertion had been aided and/or ignored by the Reservist’s superior officials, and then covered up by the chain of command of the Texas Air National Guard. TXANG had ignored the instructions in the Notice of Correction, and permitted Bush to continue to be paid as a pilot despite his lack of pilot qualifications. Bush had announced to his unit, well after he would had made his decision, that he was leaving Texas. Then, he simply disappeared, and had taken no steps to find another unit in which to serve, or another job that he could do as a member of the Air National Guard. A single letter dated September 5th, 1973, asking to be discharged, was the only evidence ARPC had that Bush continued to exist after the day he told TXANG he was leaving

Yet another use of bad science to enrich the coffers of the corpro-fascist pigs...and ensure that truly bad research is used predominently in making laws that [don't] protect us all...

Things were not looking good a few years ago for the makers of atrazine, America's second-leading weedkiller. The company was seeking approval from the Environmental Protection Agency to keep the highly profitable product on the market. But scientists were finding it was disrupting hormones in wildlife -- in some cases turning frogs into bizarre creatures bearing both male and female sex organs.
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Hormone disruption, it read, cannot be considered a "legitimate regulatory endpoint at this time" -- that is, it is not an acceptable reason to restrict a chemical's use -- because the government had not settled on an officially accepted test for measuring such disruption.
...
The Data Quality Act -- written by an industry lobbyist and slipped into a giant appropriations bill in 2000 without congressional discussion or debate -- is just two sentences directing the OMB to ensure that all information disseminated by the federal government is reliable. (my emphasis)
...
Over the years, as more was learned about the chemical's potential toxicity to wildlife and humans, it came under increasing federal scrutiny and regulatory restriction
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For decades, the main concern was cancer. The chemical clearly causes cancer in rats, and male workers in Syngenta's production facility in Louisiana have experienced much higher rates of prostate cancer than other men statewide. But studies supported by Syngenta recently convinced the EPA that the mechanism by which atrazine causes cancer in rats probably does not occur in people. (The company said the only reason for the high rate of prostate cancer in its workers is that it has an aggressive screening program that finds cases that would otherwise go undetected.)

Just another example of the "bought and paid for" 1600 Crew and it's Leader, Preznit Watch this Drive.

Well, if as with all the other things in your life, you didn't accomplish the mission, blame someone else or at least distract the audience via verbal "slieght of tongue" (borrow Peggy's, it's available).

More than half the country disapproves of how the president has handled Iraq, and reservations about the situation there have spilled over into attitudes toward Bush on terrorism. The fighting there this week is a reminder that Iraq is far from stabilized, regardless of how much Bush talks about the progress that has been made. Given that reality, Bush has gone on the offensive against Kerry.

My recommendation: right across the street from BC04 HQ. It would be soooo appropriate. Maybe we could rent some flight suits too....

It's the mountain air that's doing this to me....