Der Duchess at the worst:

The real scandal is the blatant use of homophobic rhetoric by the self-appointed Savonarolas of homo-left-wingery. It's an Animal Farm moment: the difference between a fanatic on the gay left and a fanatic on the religious right is harder and harder to discern.
...
But the left can get away with anything, can't they? Especially homophobia.

Or are you just defending "Jeffy" because of your own "milky loads" moment?

Sullivan calling a Democratic gay activist "homophobic" is like him calling his hero, Beloved Leader, a proponent of gay marriage.

The Mess in Mesopotamia. A quagmire of epoch proportions. Here's some accidental, sobering truth from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs amidst some happy-talk.

The insurgency in Iraq is not likely to be put down in a year or even two since history shows such uprisings can last a decade or more, the United States' top military commander said on Friday.

Air Force Gen. Richard Myers said that in the past century, insurgencies around the world have lasted anywhere from seven to 12 years, making a quick fix to the problem in Iraq unlikely.

"This is not the kind of business that can be done in one year, two years probably," said Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in a speech to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council here.

Meanwhile.

Three U.S. soldiers were killed and eight wounded in a roadside blast north of Baghdad on Friday...

David Corn, a writer at the Nation is either trying to be deliberately obtuse or something else. In between bashing bloggers for aggresively pursuing the Gannon story he makes this assertion:

...Sure, he worked for an organization that supported an administration and party opposed to gay rights, and he was a Bush-backer. But does that automatically qualify him for outing?

I'm not quite sure why Corn seems to want all bloggers to behave as "accredited" journalists. I have noticed that "accredited" journalists have not exactly done a real great job of either questioning or aggresively pursuing many (or ever any) stories that might tend to bring them into disfavor with the 1600 Crew.

And don't even get me started with Judith Miller and her source-cum-spy-for-Iran. There was some fine journalism, eh?

Hey, I'll be doing some light posting over the next day or so. The missus had some surgery today, so I'll be focusing on her recovery for the next little while. If I can sneak in a post or three while she's enjoying the bliss o'scheduled drugs and getting some sleep, I will.

Hey, it's Friday...who knows what the 1600 Crew will dump out on the way out of town.

Wife resting comfortably...off to get some sleep myself.

Frequent commenter OTB dropped a link in one of the posts. Clusterfuck Nation. Worth a read. Happy Friday!

Not sure yet if this another addition to the pantheon of bad ideas, or what.

The United States is planning increasingly to shift the duties of foreign troops in Iraq from providing security to training Iraq's new army and police to prevent more countries from abandoning the international coalition there and possibly lure others back.

From some of the press reports, it seems that many of the Iraqi's who make up "Iraq's new army and police" are less than enthusiastic about their new jobs. Not to mention the little problem of units that are heavily infiltrated with, to put it delicately, adversarial intelligence assets. Because I'm betting that these guys are the exception, not the rule right now.

Yeah, more Neocon wishful thinking. But, hey, Preznit Bad Ideas has not forgotten Poland!

Can't stand to see dissent.

Can't stand to be contradicted.

Can't ever admit he's fucked up.

Most conspicuous was the lack of contact between ordinary Germans and an American president visiting what could almost have been a stage setting: a town with buildings but no people, the shops and restaurants in the center of town closed, and only uniformed police officers on the streets.
...
Of course, in the security-minded post-9/11 world, a visiting American president cannot just stand exposed before throngs of German citizens, as John F. Kennedy did in 1963 when he made his famous "I am a Berliner" speech, or as Ronald Reagan did in 1987 when he declared "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"

There are some who, uh, feel like that, you know, the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is: bring 'em on. We got the force necessary to deal with the security situation."
- George W. Bush, July 2, 2003

Preznit Yellow Stripe is not my president. He's a fucking accident of history and an invention of the end-timers mating with the American Fascists. What an embarassment.

Gee, I'm sure that Don Eberly would not approve of such thoughts or speech. I'm so sad, tore up in fact.

The Duchess, you know the one who takes the money and runs, has one of her best:

WHO WAS SHAKESPEARE?

Here's another of the 1600 Crew's Wankerthon Members....Wade F. Horn. He's got a PhD in child clinical psychology and is some kind of assistant secretary for counting lemmings or something at Health and Human Services. He recently had a letter to the editor in the NYTimes.

To the Editor:

Nicholas D. Kristof claims that "there's plenty of evidence" that contraception-based sex education works ("Bush's Sex Scandal," column, Feb. 16). Well, not exactly.

Of the 29 experimental studies that examined the effectiveness of contraception-based sex education programs in delaying sexual intercourse, promoting the use of contraception and preventing pregnancy and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, some found positive effects, some found no effects and some even found negative effects.

Hardly a ringing endorsement of the effectiveness of contraception-based sex education programs.

One of the few programs that did reduce pregnancies through contraception, the Children's Aid Society-Carrera, did so by injecting young women with Depo-Provera. But injecting teenage girls with Depo-Provera does nothing to stop the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.

One thing is clear. Abstinence is the only 100 percent effective means of preventing both pregnancy and S.T.D.'s. Why, then, is it such a "scandal" that we tell our young people this simple truth?

Wade F. Horn
Asst. Secretary, Administration
for Children and Families, Dept.
of Health and Human Services

By gum! I think he's on to something here. The good Dr. who is eminently qualified as an expert in the transmission vectors of STD's and has such a strong bio in epidemiology, that looks like this:

Wade F. Horn, Ph.D. was sworn in as the Assistant Secretary for Children and Families in the Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, on July 30, 2001. The Administration for Children and Families is responsible for programs that promote the social and economic well-being of families. ACF’s programs include Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, foster care, adoption assistance, family preservation and support, Head Start, child care, child support enforcement, runaway and homeless youth, low income home energy assistance, community services, refugee resettlement, mental retardation and developmental disabilities, and community services.

Prior to this appointment, Dr. Horn was President of the National Fatherhood Initiative, whose mission is to improve the well-being of children by increasing the number of children growing up with involved, committed and responsible fathers in their lives.

From 1989-1993, Dr. Horn was the Commissioner for Children, Youth and Families and Chief of the Children’s Bureau in the Administration on Children, Youth and Families. He also served as a Presidential appointee to the National Commission on Children from 1990-1993, was a member of the National Commission on Childhood Disability from 1994-1995, and the U.S. Advisory Board on Welfare Indicators from 1996-1997. Prior to these appointments, Dr. Horn was the Director of Outpatient Psychological Services at the Children’s Hospital National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., and an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at George Washington University. From 1993 to 2001, Dr. Horn was also an adjunct faculty member at Georgetown University’s Public Policy Institute, and an affiliate scholar with the Hudson Institute.

Dr. Horn is the author of numerous articles on children and family issues, including a weekly newspaper column entitled Fatherly Advice, and is the co-author of several books including The Better Homes and Gardens New Father Book (Meredith Books, 1998) and The Better Homes and Gardens New Teen Book (Meredith Books, 1999.) He is also the lead editor of The Fatherhood Movement: A Call to Action (Lexington Books, 1998.)

Dr. Horn is frequently featured on television and radio as a child development expert and commentator. He has appeared on NBC’s Today Show, Good Morning America, CBS This Morning, McNeil-Lehrer News Hour, 20/20, 48 Hours, ABC World News Tonight, CNN, NBC Nightly News, CNBC, Fox News Channel, CNN and MS-NBC.

Dr. Horn received his Ph.D. in clinical child psychology from Southern Illinois University in 1981. He lives in Gaithersburg, Maryland, with his wife and two daughters.

An advocate of shrinking government, Don Eberly, the head of the Civil Society Project promotes faith-based organizations, private philanthropic initiatives, traditional families, volunteerism and the building of a 'values' society. Whose 'values' is the question.
...
You won't find him on many of television's talking head programs, you wouldn't be able to pick him out of a line-up, and his essays aren't sexed-up or buzz-worthy, but for more than 15 years, Don Eberly has been one of the leading advocates of a strain of conservative advocacy known as "civil society."
...
For Eberly, "the function of culture in a free society is to establish and maintain boundaries around beliefs and behaviors considered necessary for maintaining a democratic society.... Much of what passes for culture today is, in fact, anti-culture. Its chief aim is to emancipate, not restrain - to give free reign to human appetite, not moderate it."

Eberly rails against the "Break the rules!" "Have no fear!" "Be yourself!" mantras that now predominate in the culture. Thus, Eberly returns to two of his major themes, shrinking the government and the role that faith-based organizations, community groups and private philanthropy can play in restoring a "civil society."

So, we have a guy who rails against informing teens through Sex Education about the perils of STDs and effective contraception, and we have a guy who believes the the government should regulate societal behaviours to make us all conform to his standards. Lovely.

I think that they misnamed their little institute; the name should not be the National Fatherhood Initiative; but rather the National Fascism Initiative. Seems more appropriate...doncha think?

Such well spoken sorts are running the country these days. It must make Joseph Goebbels smile from Hell.

According to Krugman, drawing attention from domestic policy failures current and future.

President Bush on Tuesday dismissed as "simply ridiculous" the idea that United States was preparing to attack Iran, but he warned that he was keeping all his options open as his administration tries to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
...
"This notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous," Bush said during a news conference Tuesday evening. "And having said that, all options are on the table."

"I'm a patient man," he said. "We will look at all options and we will consider all technologies available to us, and diplomacy and intelligence.

If the truth ever fell out of Preznit Incredibly Insane's face, it would be proof that miracles might actually happen. Beloved Leader wants to invade Iran so bad, he's probably having wet dreams about charnal houses at night after his wife, Kindasleazy, tucks him into bed and kisses him on the forehead following a reading of "My Pet Goat".

The active-duty Army is in danger of failing to meet its recruiting goals, and is beginning to suffer from manpower strains like those that have dropped the National Guard and Reserves below full strength, according to Army figures and interviews with senior officers . ... "Very frankly, in a couple of places our recruiting pool is getting soft," said Lt. Gen. Franklin L. Hagenbeck, the Army's personnel chief. "We're hearing things like, 'Well, let's wait and see how this thing settles out in Iraq,' " he said in an interview. "For the active duty for '05 it's going to be tough to meet our goal, but I think we can. I think the telling year for us is going to be '06."

...

"We may not get exactly the number of people we want, but we're not sacrificing quality," Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey told a House committee Feb. 9.

The Army is offering higher ranks to enlistees who have spent time in college or junior ROTC, and as a result is bringing in more recruits at ranks above private, or E-1.

So, filling the ranks with junior NCOs who have little to no experience in Combat Arms is "not sacrificing quality"? Yeah, in the 1600 Crew Fantasyland, I suppose.

It feels a little breezy here, and it's not that Arctic Express blowing in...

update: the biography of said idiot Secretary of the Army, notice anything missing?

Dr. Francis J. Harvey was sworn in on November 19, 2004 as the 19th Secretary of the Army. As Secretary of the Army, he has statutory responsibility for all matters relating to Army manpower, personnel, reserve affairs, installations, environmental issues, weapons systems and equipment acquisition, communications, and financial management. Secretary Harvey is responsible for the Department of the Army’s annual budget of $98.5 billion. He leads a work force of over one million active duty, Army National Guard, and Army Reserve Soldiers, 220,000 civilian employees, thousands of contractors, and has stewardship over 15 million acres of land.

The majority of Secretary Harvey’s career has been spent with corporations that provided products and services to the federal government, particularly the Department of Defense, and included a year of Government Service. He has been involved in over 20 major defense programs across the entire spectrum from undersea to outer space, including tanks, missiles, submarines, surface ships, aircraft and satellites. In addition, he was a member of the Army Science Board in the late 1990s, traveling to numerous Army installations, and participated in early studies that helped define the Future Combat System. Secretary Harvey also served for one year as a White House Fellow and assistant in the immediate office of the Secretary of Defense, Harold Brown, in the late 1970s.

Prior to his appointment as the Secretary of the Army, Secretary Harvey held various professional, management and executive positions within the Westinghouse Corporation from 1969 to 1997, including President of the Electronics Systems Group, President of the Government and Environmental Services Company, and Chief Operating Officer of the multi billion dollar Industries and Technology Group. Most recently Secretary Harvey was a Director and Vice Chairman of Duratek, a company specializing in treating radioactive, hazardous, and other wastes, as well as a member of the board of several other corporations.

Secretary Harvey earned his doctorate in Metallurgy and Material Sciences from the University of Pennsylvania and his Bachelor of Science at the University of Notre Dame in Metallurgical Engineering and Material Science.

I had blogged this a couple of years ago (yes, as some of my old timey readers will attest, I do manage to blog -ahem- ahead of the power curve occaisionally). But this sure does bear repeating.

The latest chapter in the legal history of torture is being written by American pilots who were beaten and abused by Iraqis during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. And it has taken a strange twist.

The Bush administration is fighting the former prisoners of war in court, trying to prevent them from collecting nearly $1 billion from Iraq that a federal judge awarded them as compensation for their torture at the hands of Saddam Hussein's regime.

The rationale: Today's Iraqis are good guys, and they need the money.

The case abounds with ironies. It pits the U.S. government squarely against its own war heroes and the Geneva Convention.

Many of the pilots were tortured in the same Iraqi prison, Abu Ghraib, where American soldiers abused Iraqis 15 months ago. Those Iraqi victims, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said, deserve compensation from the United States.

And is anyone all that surprised that the 1600 Crew would treat Veterans this way? Coming up next: Unka Karl unleashed the Abu Ghraib Vets for Truth to convince the sheeple that these guys weren't really captured and tortured, they just fabricated their capture and torture.

The Remarkable, All-Powerful Clenis™ made them do it, BTW.

--thanx to reader JT for reminding me that some scandals never die, they just rove around for awhile--

I always figured that sooner or later someone would come out with some tapes of Beloved Leader proving that he's an arrogant, small-minded Dipshit. Texas, which has some of the most draconian drug laws on the books, has probably locked up thousands of casual, recreational Marijuana users. Apparently, they missed one.

Defending his approach, Mr. Bush said: "I wouldn't answer the marijuana questions. You know why? Because I don't want some little kid doing what I tried."

Oh, and BTW, if you are an war-mongering dope-smoking drunken frat-boy, and your last name is Bush, it's all ok if you have accepted Jesus. Apparently. From his lips to Doug Wead's tape recorder. Thank you Linda Tripp.

Some of my friends express surprise when I say that I won't go to Wal-Mart with them, or to its sister store, Sam's Club. I'll pay an extra buck or two to avoid WM and its outgrowth like the plague. Personal preference, I guess.

So now, the ever-campaign-contributor-friendly 1600 Crew has allowed Wal-Mart to investigate itself. Presumably it will find it did nothing wrong. Of course. Not so fast, says a congressman, and the Department of Labor's Inspector General.

The inspector general of the Labor Department has decided to investigate its agreement to give Wal-Mart Stores 15 days' notice before investigating any stores facing complaints of child labor violations, according to department officials.
...
Representative George Miller of California, the top Democrat on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, asked the inspector general to intervene, saying that the department was wrong to give Wal-Mart advance notice before investigating complaints. Noting that Wal-Mart executives had contributed heavily to President Bush's re-election, Mr. Miller said that Wal-Mart had received special treatment and that the department had acted suspiciously in not making the settlement public for more than a month.
...
Mr. Miller and several career department officials said that Wal-Mart had improper control over what the department could say because the settlement stated that Wal-Mart and the department would "develop the terms of any joint or separate statement" about the agreement. Mr. Radzely said that Wal-Mart had no voice in what the department said about the settlement.

The DoL IG will undoubyedly be incurring Mrs. Mitch McConnell's wrath this week. I suspect there will either be a formal retraction by the IG, or the folks on his team will be inspecting Labor violations in Guam, unaccompanied.

Bottom line: in this day and age, don't fuck with the campaign contributors...they expect the best blindness money can buy. Why? It's Everyday Lowest Prices on elected officials...isn't that cute?

Looks like Karl wants to have another battle. This time, however he's using the LiarBoarLiars for the Lie to try and defame the AARP because they oppose Preznit Wasted Days give-away to the investment house contributors.

Taking its cues from the success of last year's Swift boat veterans' campaign in the presidential race, a conservative lobbying organization has hired some of the same consultants to orchestrate attacks on one of President Bush's toughest opponents in the battle to overhaul Social Security.

Ahhh, for the days of unpoisoned discourse. Politics...gotta love it.

More on the Ratfucking Assholes for the Lying as the story develops...

Again.

On Anderson Cooper 360 tonight, Dana Milbank intimated that (paraphrasing here) 'others in the WH pressroom knew about Gannon for about 15 months' and that he's one of the "crazies" there. They're there because: Mike McCurry let TV cameras into the press room.

Yup. Gannon is a direct result of the Clenis™. Dana Milbank says so. It must be true.

So, media whore is a title that seems to be becoming more appropriate every day.

Yo. This one goes out to all my fellow vets. The "Blog of the Year" dissed President Jimmy Carter, a vet and an honorable man. I don't know about you, but I have now become officially as hell sick of right-wing too-busy-to-have-served punks calling me and those I respect, terrorist-loving lefties. What are we going to do about it? Suggestions welcomed.

For my part, I was thinking that we can start by pointing out that those men and women of the Boomer Generation and slightly younger who sat out the Cold War in the comfort of our shadows must be commie-lovers. Yup, Lovers of Lenin all. Otherwise why were they not willing to stand on the walls to keep the heathen commies penned up within their own borders? Why? Because, by using the same logic that they use to conflate us with the likes of such miserable people as Osama, they loved Brother Joe Stalin like a sibling.

Think about it, Doughy Pantload is 35. He was of perfect age to have enlisted when the Warsaw Pact was still a factor in RealPolitik, as were David Horowitz, Hindrocket et al (their on-line bios below make no mention of military service)

John H. Hinderaker is a lawyer with the Minneapolis law firm Faegre & Benson. For more than ten years Hinderaker has written with his former law partner Scott Johnson on public policy issues including income inequality, income taxes, campaign finance reform, affirmative action, welfare reform, and race in the criminal justice system. Both Hinderaker and Johnson are fellows of the Claremont Institute. Their articles have appeared in National Review, The American Enterprise, American Experiment Quarterly, and newspapers from Florida to California. The Claremont Institute has archived many of their articles here.

Mr. Hinderaker lives with his family in Apple Valley, Minnesota. He is a graduate of Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School. He can be reached by phone at (612)766-8430.

Scott Johnson
Scott W. Johnson is an attorney and senior vice president of TCF National Bank in Minneapolis. For more than ten years Johnson has written with his former law partner John H. Hinderaker on public policy issues including income inequality, income taxes, campaign finance reform, affirmative action, welfare reform, and race in the criminal justice system. Both Johnson and Hinderaker are fellows of the Claremont Institute. Their articles have appeared in National Review, The American Enterprise, American Experiment Quarterly, and newspapers from Florida to California. The Claremont Institute has archived many of their articles here.

Johnson lives with his family in St. Paul, Minnesota. He is a graduate of Dartmouth College and the University of Minnesota Law School. He can be reached by phone at (612) 661-8879.

Paul Mirengoff
Paul Mirengoff is an attorney in Washington, D.C. He is a 1971 graduate of Dartmouth College and a 1974 graduate of Stanford Law School. He has two daughters and lives with his family in Bethesda, Maryland.

Paul supports Everton FC of the English Premier Soccer League, as well as the Washington Redskins, the Washington Wizards, and the University of Maryland basketball team.

Paul can be reached at pmirengoff@akingump.com or by telephone at 202-887-4354.

Sure they never (well Horowitz was probably the exception) had the chance to cover themselves with glory, blood and medals in the rice paddies of SE Asia, but they took no other chances either after 1975, like walking a post on the 38th Parallel or in Europe, they deployed aboard no ships to the Med or WestPac. So, they were objectively pro-communist. They loved the red menace. Loved it. Because they never wanted to stand up to it.

Perhaps they hated America during the Cold War, and showed it by refusing to defend her. Commie-loving traitors.

Am I saying that these folks are actually traitors? No. But neither am I a traitor, and neither is Jimmy Carter or any other American who disagrees with their views. That's one reason I served, because of my belief that every American has an equal right to be right and to be wrong. I did not serve to one day turn my country over to loud-mouthed self-absorbed reactionaries who want to dishonor me and those who believe as I do by calling me a traitor for not sharing their worldview.

I would love to see Mr. Hindrocket walk right up to Jimmy Carter and call him a traitor to his face. He doesn't have the guts.

From the same hearings:

Rumsfeld --

When the ranking Democrat on the committee, Rep. Ike Skelton (Mo.), asked for an estimate on the number of insurgents in Iraq, the secretary said, "I am not going to give you a number for it because it's not my business to do intelligent work."

It was a common article of faith, I seem to recall out here in the left side of blogtopia (y! sctw!) that the whole Mess in Mesopotamia would become THE recruiting ground for al-Qaeda in the middle east. Well, hate to say "I told you so" but...

The insurgency in Iraq continues to baffle the U.S. military and intelligence communities, and the U.S. occupation has become a potent recruiting tool for al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, top U.S. national security officials told Congress yesterday.

"Islamic extremists are exploiting the Iraqi conflict to recruit new anti-U.S. jihadists," CIA Director Porter J. Goss told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Donnie, on the other hand is pretty sure that all is well...remain calm. I hear he always liked the part of Chip Diller in Animal House.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told the House Armed Services Committee that he has trouble believing any of the estimates of the number of insurgents because it is so difficult to track them.

Rumsfeld said that the CIA and DIA had differing assessments at different times but that U.S. intelligence estimates of the insurgency are "considerably lower" than a recent Iraqi intelligence report of 40,000 hard-core insurgents and 200,000 part-time fighters. Rumsfeld told Rep. Ike Skelton (Mo.), the committee's ranking Democrat, that he had copies of the CIA and DIA estimates but declined to disclose them in a public session because they are classified.

Truly, Rumsfeld is an imbecile. I'm guessing that he's still referring to them as "dead enders", and refuses to believe than any will stand up to him and Beloved Leader.

After the hearing, Rumsfeld told reporters that he did not mean to be "dismissive" of the intelligence reports.

"People are doing the best that can be done, and the fact is that people disagree," he said. ". . . It's not clear to me that the number is the overriding important thing."

That is all.

Am I missing something here?

The shy family doctor who became the leading candidate for prime minister Tuesday says ending the nation's rampant violence is his top priority and that U.S. troops would remain as long as they are needed to achieve that goal.
...
"Islam should be the official religion of the country, and one of the main sources for legislation, along with other sources that do not harm Muslim sensibilities," said al-Jaafari, who currently serves as Iraq's interim vice president and was living in London until Saddam's regime was overthrown.

He said he supports women's rights, including the right to be the president or prime minister, as well as self-determination and individual freedoms for all Iraqis.

The interview took place in the office of al-Jaafari's home in the U.S.-guarded Green Zone in central Baghdad.

The Irani mullahs have a more than vested interest in this process, something that they have made clear. There's nothing that would make them happier than their border being secured by a friendly, Shiite-controlled state.

If the US troops leave abruptly now or in the near future, it will make the fall of Saigon look like an excercise in evacuation procedures. This clown will be back to practicing family medicine in Lower Bowel, Mississippi under a new name, and we'll be dealing with a huge new country learning how to chant "Death to America" under the watchful eyes of their religious Gestapo.

Nice going, Preznit Yellow Stripe. Yet another venture you've managed to louse up like all that have gone before it. Have the Lump fix you another Bourbon and Branch, yer the preznit, no one can tell you what to do.

Reproductive rights and womens health issues are core to the foundation of our party. All this talk about "compromise" are crap. Pure and simple. It should be a non-starter for us, as liberals and progressives to ever begin to think in these terms. This is DLC defeatist mindfucking at its best.

In their search for middle ground on the subject of abortion, Democrats are encountering a mixture of resistance and retreat from abortion rights advocates in their own party.

Since its defeats in the November elections, nothing has put the fractured soul of the Democratic Party on display more vividly than abortion. Party leaders, including Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and the new chairman, Howard Dean, have repeatedly signaled an effort to recalibrate the party's thinking about new restrictions on abortion.

The right wing has pursued this issue for decades as a way to make inroads with constituencies that they thought were favorable to them, and were right in some cases.

We need to start standing up, and reminding them that we are not the ones who support murderers who assasinate police officers and doctors. We do not blow up the businesses of those we do not agree with. Because if we don't then they have won, and won by using the tactics of the very terrorists we find lined against us every day, assasination, arson, bombing and psychological terrorism by hounding people who are doing a job and providing a service that is needed for many reasons.

Nothing would make me happier than for there to never be another abortion performed, but that's not the reality or even something that's ever going to feasibly happen. With the christo-fascists preaching the failed policies of "abstinence education" over the validated practices of contraception it's only a matter of time before they too are faced with choices that they are fighting to keep others from being able to make. Given their preference for denial and belief in fairy-tales, they'll be hoping that the stork will pass them by until the last trimester. When that new little responsibility that they neither wanted or perhaps can't afford arrives, or both. I hope that they can do the right thing and either give it up for adoption or prepare themselves to responsibly raise a child. Because that's a choice too. I hope it's one that they can face.

We need to tell the DLC to get fucked. It's important that all choices be open to all women, always.

Looks like someone has been hitting Preznit Reznit Doper's stash in the sock drawer again...

The American military is working on a new generation of soldiers, far different from the army it has.

"They don't get hungry," said Gordon Johnson of the Joint Forces Command at the Pentagon. "They're not afraid. They don't forget their orders. They don't care if the guy next to them has just been shot. Will they do a better job than humans? Yes."
...
The military plans to invest tens of billions of dollars in automated armed forces. The costs of that transformation will help drive the Defense Department's budget up almost 20 percent, from a requested $419.3 billion for next year to $502.3 billion in 2010, excluding the costs of war. The annual costs of buying new weapons is scheduled to rise 52 percent, from $78 billion to $118.6 billion. (emphasis added)

Imagine if you will, robot soldiers built by the lowest bidder running the latest Windows OS. There's a scary thought.

Gee, make way for a cheesy script from George Lucas starring the Governator..."Return of the Defense Contractor Terminators ... Attack on the GAAP". I can hardly wait. And they've already planned to spend on this for the next sixty-plus years, how considerate of them.

Of course, this will all be paid for with revenue-raising Tax Cuts. Of Course.

This just in from the Department of the Insanely Obvious:

A former White House official said yesterday that President Bush has failed to deliver on his promise to help religious groups serve the poor, the homeless and drug addicts because the administration lacks a genuine commitment to its "compassionate conservative" agenda.

David Kuo, who was deputy director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives for much of Bush's first term, said in published remarks that the White House reaped political benefits from the president's promise to help religious organizations win taxpayer funding to care for "the least, the last and the lost" in the United States. But he wrote: "There was minimal senior White House commitment to the faith-based agenda."

"There was minimal senior White House commitment to the faith-based agenda." ...Gee, Mr. Kuo what was your first clue that it was a big PR campaign? I wonder which "media" talking heads took the money for this one?

Didn't Adolf Hitler believe in the principle of the "Big Lie" too? And to think, all that money Prescott made from the Nazis is now paying dividends for his family...Fascism, it's sort of a "Family Affair".

The revelations coming "out" about poor Jeff Gannon/Guckert/Bulldog, whatever certainly seem to be plentiful. I was watching AmericaBlog this morning to see what John Aravosis was going to publish...the hints were sort of tantalizing, and with his "hint" of invoices, it seemed that maybe it'd be something like credit card receipts of ol Bulldog topping for some well known GoOPer or another. Well, not quite. Seems that "Gannon", who was quietly sitting in the White House Pressroom by day for Talon/GOPUSA as a "volunteer" might have been making his money by charging $200/hour or $1200/weekend as a pay-for-play boy-toy. Yup, a hooker. Now, will the media finally start to see that they are being used as a knowing and complicit propaganda arm of the 1600 Crew? If they had been awake, someone there might have taken the time to break this story first...

Or, did they all know that Gannon was a "made man" and were worried that blowing the whistle on him might endanger their (and their organizations) access to the WH and the 1600 Crew? If Gannon was showing up on "daily passes" for two years, it would seem that someone had to have noticed that. It would only take a word from the local controlling fascist party official to keep mouths shut, ears covered and eyes closed. Believe it.

If the pillow talk allegations about the Plame affair pan out, then it'll be interesting to see who was sharing the pillow with ol' Bulldog.

The Media has a lot to answer for here...let the spinning begin!

Yeah, she had no fucking earthly idea that some mysterious organization made up of radical Islamists might want to do something evil. Because she's got integrity. She told Senator Boxer that. Herself. Well, that makes her an outright liar on two counts. Wanna try for more?

Nearly half of the Federal Aviation Administration's daily intelligence reports in the months leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks mentioned Osama bin Laden (news - web sites)'s terrorist network, according to newly released documents.

WASHINGTON — Clashing sharply with critical Democrats, Secretary of State-designate Condoleezza Rice today defended the Bush administration's decision to topple Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and repeatedly asked senators at her confirmation hearing not to impugn her integrity or suggest she had been untruthful about the reasons for going to war.

Rice, in a sometimes stormy session that opened what may stretch into two days of hearings, offered her sharpest retort to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who suggested that in 2003 Rice contradicted President Bush's comments on illicit Iraqi weapons, then contradicted her own positions in her remarks today.

"Your loyalty to the mission ... overwhelmed your respect for the truth," Boxer said.

"Senator, I'm happy to continue the discussion, but I'd like to do it in such a way that it does not impugn my integrity," Rice said after listening solemnly to Boxer's criticism. "Senator, I have to say I have never, ever lost respect for the truth in the service of anything."

Because I have sticky fingers.

Well, since no one wanted to talk here, and because it was easier to put up an "open thread" than to delete the entry and then rebuild the whole freakin' blog to get rid of said duplicate entry, I put up a "place holder".

The Koufax Awards are going up over at Wampum, and I don't know if I'll be a finalist yet or not in the "Most Deserving More Recognition" category or not. I'd like to be, but it was an honor to be at least nominated two years in a row for a Koufax. In the Right Blogistan Wizbang awards I managed to place just above the half-way point in my category of "Military Blogs", and those are some serious winger awards...so thanks for that. It certainly demonstrated that we are a community! If I make the finals in the Koufax awards, any votes cast for Democratic Veteran would be appreciated. I won't say vote often, but vote early if I'm a finalist ... it might encourage others who haven't been here before to drop by and cast a vote as well.

I'd like to humbly add a few recommendations, in the Best Post take a look at TBogg's "Exit Interview". Tom is a hell of guy, and when you read that post, if you haven't seen it before, it'll give you an honest introduction to the man who is TBogg. It's not a political post, it's just an absolutely first rate piece of writing, and that's what this is for, right?

Dave Neiwart, Orcinus, deserves a second Koufax, this as "Best Expert" for his continuing work as a documentarian of the Radical Right and the effect they are having on our country. Dave's work is so good that when the house of cards being constructed by the opposition finally implodes, his work will stand on its own for its veracity, research and quality of writing.

Richard Cranium, (a fellow Navy Vet (MM1/SS)) and company are a great choice for Best Blog this year. Yeah, Kos and Atrios are great, but with more visitors per week than most of us get in a year, they've gotten the recognition that they're pretty damn "best" already. So drop a vote in the bucket for All-Spin Zone.

Best Writing: Digby. Damn when he soars it's just flat awesome. Heartstopping sometimes. Damn. Go Digby.

Funniest aka Most Humourous....this is tough. I loves me some TBogg, but he's won this before. The General always leaves me laughing, but for consistent, offbeat almost Pythonesque humor, I'm going with Norbizness...there's a guy who puts his heart and soul into doing some seriously wild stuff, he sure works at it. And I like it. Happy Furry Puppys. Indeed. If Norbi wins, will the General want to know if they are Heterosexual or French Puppies? It matters you know.

Best Group Blog: Pandagon. Consistent, sharp and always on point with some of the best writing an analysis in blogtopia (y! sctp!). Jesse's back to flying solo now that Ezra has littered his apartment with beer cans, empty pizza boxes and Zephyr Teachout's number scrawled on the wall in blue crayon (kidding!), and hauled ass over to Typepad to start his own miserable (but well written) screed. Together they made Pandagon a daily read for all us seriously blog-addicted working class drones who needed to read great writing to get the day going.

Now that I've shamelessly blogwhored for at least five or six votes if I'm a finalist, go vote. And don't forget who sent ya.

Help me out here, is this just Beloved Leader doing his best Rovian ju-jitsu or what?

In the face of mounting Congressional concern about the projected costs of the new Medicare prescription drug benefit, President Bush today vowed to veto any attempts to limit it.

"I signed Medicare reform proudly," he said. "And any attempt to limit the choices of our seniors and to take away their prescription drug coverage under Medicare will meet my veto."

Some lawmakers have urged Congress to change the new Medicare law by granting the government power to negotiate drug prices directly with pharmaceutical companies. The law prohibits such negotiations for Medicare, the government health insurance plan for the elderly.

Two Republican representatives, Zach Wamp (Tenn.) and Mike Pence (Ind.), who voted against the bill in 2003, have suggested that high-income people should not fully qualify for the benefit.

Other lawmakers have renewed their calls for allowing the importation of U.S.-approved drugs from foreign countries, and for allowing the federal government to negotiate costs with drug makers.

In his comments, Bush suggested he would fight any cutbacks in the program, which has yet to take full effect.

"For decades we promised America's seniors that we can do better, and we finally did. Now we must keep our word," Bush said.

Forgot to mention this yesterday, a small but I think significant thing in the on-line world. In his "story" on GucGannon, Kurtz mentions the "liberal" bloggers like they are something he would scrape off his shoe with your pocketknife, referring to them only by their URL's and/or names and then in plain-text at that:

...The information about Gannon was posted on the liberal sites Daily Kos (www.dailykos.com,) Atrios (atrios.blogspot.com) and World o' Crap.

Moving down the page, you'll note that Hacktacular Howie then goes on to give what for him is a good knob-varnishing for his paymasters in Karl Rove's office by quoting well-known sheet-merchant, Instacracker.

Glenn Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor who writes on InstaPundit.com, said the tactics used against Gannon "seem to me to be despicable.

Kurtz put in an actual hyperlink to the material he wants his readers to see. Yeah, it's a little thing, but oh-so-telling. Don't you think?

SCLM. Indeed.

Payback is a bitch. Especially if you're going to try and be a member of a class-action suit. The 1600 Crew is handing their biggest contributors a gift. Why in the hell the Democrats did not try and block this is not such a mystery...they're getting paid off too.

The Senate approved a measure Thursday to help shield businesses from major class action lawsuits like the ones that have been brought against tobacco companies, giving President Bush the first legislative victory of his second term.

Under the legislation, long sought by big business, large multistate class action lawsuits could no longer be heard in small state courts. Such courts have handed out multimillion-dollar verdicts.
...
The Senate passed the bill 72-26. It now goes to the House.

"We look forward to this legislation coming to the House floor next week so we can send it to President Bush, who has made its enactment a top priority," said a statement from House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, House Judiciary chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., and House Agriculture chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va.

Congratulations all you stupid republicans, I hope you never need to make a claim for workplace injuries like from, oh, say, a known carcinogen. Or get into a car with faulty parts. Or that you lose your blowjob "personal account" blowjob retirement money in a stock-churning scheme at a less-than-honest brokerage. 'Cause we all know, that none of those things ever happen to Tru Believers. Ever.

Is it just me, or did I hear the sound of the DPRK (North Korean) Politburo laughing their collective asses off at the 1600 Crew?

North Korea boasted publicly for the first time Thursday that it has nuclear weapons and said it will stay away from disarmament talks, dramatically raising the stakes in the 2-year-old dispute. The Bush administration called on Pyongyang to give up its atomic aspirations so life can be better for its impoverished people.
...
North Korea's harshly worded pronouncement posed a grave challenge to President Bush (news - web sites), who started his second term with a vow to end North Korea's nuclear program through six-nation disarmament talks.

"We ... have manufactured nukes for self-defense to cope with the Bush administration's ever-more undisguised policy to isolate and stifle the (North)," the North Korean Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency. The agency's report used the word "nukes" in its English-language dispatch.

Countries around the world that might have respected American economic power over military, might have once listened and maybe even been persuaded to be reached out to, and join the community of Nations. Now, if they can, they're arming themselves to the teeth; they at least learned the lessons of the Cold War. There's no deterrance, like deterrance based on Mutally Assured Destruction.

Haven't we seen this movie before?

Oh, and a note to the PhD Progeny at State: Honey, if the rulers of North Korea haven't given a shit about their starving masses to date, what makes your slightly disfunctional NeoCon brain believe that the North K's are gonna care tomorrow? These are not rational actors, and they don't actually give a crap about you, China, South Korea or anyone else. I think that you might have just heard Beloved Leader (NK) say "Bring it on!".

Hear about the newest thing? The movie about the movie "Deep Throat"? At the recent opening in New York, lotsa luminaries from Hollywood showed up and some from the local area too, like Judith Regan. Who was there as an "expert" of sorts. Dear Judith, former paramour of Bernie "Falling faster than an rock into the sun" Kerik, who has just published a book by Jenna Jameson on being a porn star had this to say:

As a young woman, she said, she was not one of the thousands of sensation-seekers who dutifully lined up at the World Theater, on West 49th Street, where "Deep Throat" was first shown. She added that she learned about Ms. Jameson from her son, who dropped out of his M.I.T. fraternity because Ms. Jameson's videos were all the fraternity brothers were interested in watching.

So the bottom line here, and I say that with a straight face, is that our Judith never watched porn, she just lives on selling it. Truly a Family Values republican. Someone call the General.

Ahh, when we were all so young and stupid. We thought that, well, we'd forgotten Poland. It took the RighteousRath™ of Beloved Leader to bring our attention back to Poland. We'd forgotten, but he hadn't. Now it looks like Hubble falls into the sea, but Poland will not be forgotten!

President Bush told President Aleksander Kwasniewski of Poland on Wednesday that he would ask Congress for $100 million to modernize the Polish military, part of a program of support for a new NATO ally that has more than 2,000 soldiers in Iraq.
...
In the interview, Mr. Kwasniewski, who leaves office in December, also said he had advised Mr. Bush not to act unilaterally against Iran in the current standoff over its nuclear program.

"My advice was simple," he said, sipping tea in Blair House, across the street from the White House, after his lunch with Mr. Bush. "I am absolutely against taking action by one side only. I said this," he said, and Mr. Bush, he said, seemed to agree.

And Prez Kwasniewski, if when he comes to Europe he compliments your country in any way, just go on home and forget he ever mentioned the 100 BIG, because it's a sure sign that Preznit Coprolith Brains already has. We all know that from experience.

From the Placenta-that-Lives,

"For the record, I did in fact mean it. I wrote it here. As for why my sorry a** isn't in the kill zone, lots of people think this is a searingly pertinent question. No answer I could give -- I'm 35 years old, my family couldn't afford the lost income, I have a baby daughter, my a** is, er, sorry, are a few -- ever seem to suffice."

A simpering, pathetic fuck, thorough and through that Jonah. Go read his continous spanking from Norbizness...it makes you proud to be an American. And it makes me afraid to ever piss off Norbizness...

But, but, but...

I thought he was off to see the wurld on his last fund-drive proceeds. Or maybe reality caught up with his sorry ass. Well, What. Ever. Obviously, his two-day hi-anus did not make him any smarter ... or less annoying:

It would be extremely churlish of me not to offer some praise for at least the aspirations of Bush's new budget. ... I simply don't believe in Bush's conviction on this.

That my stats recently passed the 250,00 mark. A quarter of a million. By the Hairy Thunderer, Thank You All!

Now, I need to disclose that in my wild ride to a quarter of a million served, Tbogg bought me a very excellent dinner once, and I bought Jesse lunch once.

And fellow veteran Kos still won't blogroll me. Perhaps I should employ the "Attaturk strategery"...

No one I know has ever met Armstrong Williams, Maggie Gallagher or that "JD" guy, I don't think.

Note to Dr. Dean: send me cash and the next 250,000 visitors are in the bag!

Seriously, thanks again to everyone...that means you Sullywatch, Quiddity, Bubba, skippy, TBogg, and everyone else, yeah, even that Duncan guy (has he linked to me lately? Sadly, No!). Especially all of you who wade thru my rantings...THANKS!

Remember last year, when the Fat Denny at the urging of the Bug-man broke House tradition (and Rules) to keep voting on the Medicare Big Pharma giveaway act open so they could twist a few more arms and threaten a few more republicans?

Arms have always been twisted during close congressional votes on major legislation, but an ethics report rebuking House Majority Leader Tom DeLay added something the public rarely learns: what lawmakers really say to each other.

The House ethics committee report even reveals what Republican members didn't say — but were thinking — as they unsuccessfully pleaded with Rep. Nick Smith R-Mich., to support a prescription drug benefit in Medicare.

The following are thoughts, comments and remembrances of the November 2003 events, as told to ethics committee investigators for their report on attempts to pressure Smith.

As DeLay, R-Texas, approached Smith in late November 2003, he was thinking — based on prior conversations — that he would be "stuck" talking with the Michigan lawmaker for a long time.

That might explain why the following conversation lasted only eight seconds.

DeLay: "I will personally endorse your son (a candidate for Congress). That's my last offer."

There was, in fact, no first offer. DeLay said it was his exit strategy to end the conversation quickly.

It was long enough, though, for the House ethics committee on Thursday to criticize DeLay for trying to trade a political endorsement for a vote. The committee also rebuked Rep. Candice Miller , R-Mich., for a heavy-handed attempt at persuasion, and Smith himself, for making exaggerated statements about the pressure he received.

On Friday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said, "This offer of a quid pro quo further taints the Republicans' Medicare prescription drug bill."

The attempts to link Smith's vote to his son's candidacy was pervasive throughout the ethics report. Brad Smith eventually lost in the primary as he tried to succeed his retiring father.

Most of the approaches occurred during the pre-dawn hours of Nov. 22, 2003, when the Medicare vote was held open by GOP leaders from 3 a.m. to 5:51 a.m. Normally, a typical 15-minute vote may be held open about five minutes for late-arriving members.

The government's top expert on Medicare costs was warned that he would be fired if he told key lawmakers about a series of Bush administration cost estimates that could have torpedoed congressional passage of the White House-backed Medicare prescription-drug plan.
...
Richard S. Foster, the chief actuary for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which produced the $551 billion estimate, told colleagues last June that he would be fired if he revealed numbers relating to the higher estimate to lawmakers.

"This whole episode which has now gone on for three weeks has been pretty nightmarish," Foster wrote in an e-mail to some of his colleagues June 26, just before the first congressional vote on the drug bill. "I'm perhaps no longer in grave danger of being fired, but there remains a strong likelihood that I will have to resign in protest of the withholding of important technical information from key policy makers for political reasons."

The White House released budget figures yesterday indicating that the new Medicare prescription drug benefit will cost more than $1.2 trillion in the coming decade, a much higher price tag than President Bush suggested when he narrowly won passage of the law in late 2003.

The projections represent the most complete picture to date of how much the program will cost after it begins next year. The expense of the new drug benefit has been a source of much controversy since the day Congress approved it, with Democrats and some Republicans complaining that the White House has consistently low-balled the expected cost to the government.

When this is "all over" a few years from now, we'll either be the United States of Christo-Fascism or trying real hard to forget this as we pay the massive debts left for us by these lying thieves.