Did you know that depite Beloved Leader's proclamation, the Mission in Iraq is Still Not Accomplished?

After a postelection respite, the pace of insurgent attacks in Iraq has increased in recent weeks to approach last year's levels, Pentagon officials said Tuesday.
...
That's about 400 attacks a week of all kinds: bombings, shootings, rocket and mortar attacks, Pentagon officials said. About half cause significant damage or injure or kill someone.

"The United States and the coalition forces, in my personal view, will not be the thing that will defeat the insurgency..."The people that are going to defeat that insurgency are going to be the Iraqis."

Let's review: No WMD's, Iraq is becoming a rallying cry and OJT for terrorist wanna-be's, Saddam is sitting in a prison cell and it's the first anniversary of Abu Ghraib and there are 1550-plus less US soldiers who gave their lives for that deserting, lying sack of shit Beloved Leader. Now SECDEF says that their daily grind isn't worth it, because it's useless? Our troops on the ground will mount up and do their missions in half-ass armored vehicles with body armor provided by the lowest bidder or if they're lucky, their families and friends back home. It's too bad they're a zillion times more professional and dedicated than their civilian masters back home who seem to be selling them out already.

I hope they remember Rumsfeld's statement when they see him next time...maybe they can ask for a clarification of his words. After all, what's he gonna do, send them to Iraq?

"Troop-supporting, National Security" republicans my ass.

An honest-to-goodness leg-spreading painted lady speaks. Liddy Dole who took over the Tammy Faye make-up concession at some point cracks her foundation to make this pronouncement regarding base closings (yup, they're still going on):

The upcoming round of military base closings must be "untarnished by political influence," Republican Sen. Elizabeth Dole declared.

Then she put in a plug for her own state.

North Carolina "supports a unique military infrastructure," prime for expansion not closure, Dole told the head of the commission that will review Pentagon proposals for which bases to shut.

If they we'ren't so scary, they'd be sort of amusing.

I think I'd like to go to this commencement ceremony. I wonder if there's a nearby airport I could tool on into, then drive over and watch the festivities...

Seems that Preznit Morally Bankrupt is giving one of his two inspirational ("hey! I am C+ Augustus and now I so rock! Everyone kisses my ass, even my DAD!") speeches at the Boat School (that's the Naval Academy) and at a small Christian college (scroll down to the story) in Michigan, except they're not Beloved Leaders kind of Christians...see they actually believe in all that "turn the other cheek" and "love thy brother as thyself" and the actual "Golden Rule" stuff.

On closer inspection, it turns out that Calvin College is not the bastion of the Christian Right it appeared to be. In fact, judging from my e-mail, it's a veritable hotbed of those other Christian values -- the ones that oppose war, work for social justice, and don't think much of the president at all.
...
Pomkala tried to help me understand where Calvin fits into the Christian spectrum: "Calvin is confessionally Reformed/Presbyterian (in other words, Calvinistic -- no surprise there, I guess), with a much more positive view of the intellect and participation in the broader culture than is characteristic of American evangelicalism, much of which is anti-intellectual (e.g. 'creation science') and escapist (e.g. the Left Behind series), not to mention morally barbaric (e.g. opposition to stem cell research; anti-gay)."
...
And what is Professor Pomkala planning to do during Bush's speech?

"As a faculty member, I'm required to attend commencement, but I plan on reading a book during the president's speech -- probably My Pet Goat."

Reading "My Pet Goat" during the speech. I love it.

Another job for Assrocket, Freakin' and Big Clunk: There's a note needs investigatin'!

Seriously, this is sad and scary...I blame the christo-fascists.

Students of color at a small Christian college in the north suburbs were moved from dormitories to an undisclosed hotel Thursday, as the FBI and other law enforcement began investigating a racist letter threatening violence on campus.
...
Love, in a phone interview from her Pittsburgh home, said her son was told that one student found her car broken into and a note on the vehicle calling her a "N----r lover."

Nope, once again the christo-fascists will find some way to blame this on academia, probably propose anti-miscengation laws and hold rallys for Jeebus and blame the whole incident on gay marriage. Par for the course these days.

I always suspected this was true...and knew it when I saw this quote by retiring congressional adulterer Henry Hyde (R-Greater Hypocrisy), I guess he's going for the book deal option:

Shaw had asked Hyde, a DuPage County Republican, if the impeachment of President Clinton was "payback" for the proceedings against President Nixon.

"I can't say it wasn't," Hyde told him in the interview. "But I also thought that the Republican Party should stand for something, and if we walked away from this, no matter how difficult, we could be accused of shirking our duty."

I guess that Adulterer Hyde missed the part about a Preznit who lies a country into war. That would never be impeachable...nope.

So here I am, reading along in this article in the Post, which says that Preznit Wasted Blow's approval ratings are going down faster than JGJG for a fee, and the story ends with this line:

Four in 10 Americans said they think religious conservatives play too large a role in the Republican Party, a view shared by about half of all Democrats and independents but only one in five Republicans. Conversely, nearly as many Americans (35 percent) said liberals have too much influence over the Democratic Party, a view held by nearly six in 10 Republicans.

Why is Harry Reid surprised?

"Last week, I met with the president and was encouraged when he told me he would not become involved in Republican efforts to break the Senate rules," Reid said in a statement. "Now it appears he was not being honest, and that the White House is encouraging this raw abuse of power." Reid said his exchange with Bush took place at a regularly scheduled breakfast with congressional leaders.

If the filibuster goes, so does I suspect the concept of "Unanimous Consent". Legislation in the Senate will die the death of a thousand cuts from the death of the filibuster forward. And the republicans need only remember one thing: they will not be in the majority forever. They might not even be in the majority after 2006, and they will rue the day they did away with the filibuster. Big time.

As many kudos and nice things have been said about Harry Reid (and I'm sure he deserves most, if not all of them), why does he not yet understand that Preznit Pathological Prevaricator can tell the truth no more than he can predict winning lottery numbers? Yo, Harry. Wake up.

So, it looks like Preznit Abysmally Amoral's toady in Iraq gets a free pass on any responsibility for Abu Ghraib.

An Army inspector general's report has cleared senior Army officers of wrongdoing in the abuse of military prisoners in Iraq and elsewhere, government officials familiar with the findings said yesterday.

The only Army general officer recommended for punishment for the failures that led to abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison and other facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan is Brig. Gen. Janis L. Karpinski, who was in charge of U.S. prison facilities in Iraq as commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade in late 2003 and early 2004. Several sources said Karpinski is expected to receive an administrative reprimand for dereliction of duty.

I guess that in the midst of a conflict that is sapping the ability of the Army to contnue to maintain a battle-ready force, the 1600 Crew must feel that giving those actually responsible for Abu Ghraib a pass will keep the brass in line for a little while longer. And of course since the actual concepts of responsibility and accoutability are as foreign to the 1600 Crew as quantum mechanics or molecular biology, it's no surprise to see them give everyone who might be accountable a walk, from Beloved Leader on down.

Colbert King.

Wow. Color me completely un-amazed.

The Halliburton corporation, already the Iraq war's poster child for "waste, fraud and abuse", has been hit with a new double whammy. A report from the US State Department accuses the company of "poor performance" in its US$1.2 billion contract to repair Iraq's vital southern oilfields.

And a powerful California congressman is charging that Defense Department audits showing additional overcharges totaling $212 million were concealed from United Nations monitors by the administration of President George W Bush. (my emphasis)

The new overcharges bring to $2 billion, or 42% of the contract amounts, the grand total of questionable bills from Halliburton.

Well, once they quit teachin' all that math and accounting stuff in skool, along with biolergy and stuff good corportate citizens like Enron and CheneyBurton can never be accused of doin' bad stuff again.

Me, I'm just waiting for Powerslime to point out the inconsistency of the kerning in the reports, so they can be named asshats of the year again by the Ann Coulter Fan Mag.

Being Human, (as opposed to what, Human Being?), I like to check to see where my referrals come from...and I found this little gem of a blog. I kind of like it...but I have no idea who Jenny Slater is.

Check out the Silence-of-the-Lambs Time Cover.

Going in the Blogroll. Indeed.

It's an amazing thing to think of the selection of the new Pope o'Rome this way: when they were young men, Pope John Paul as KAROL JÓSEF WOJTYŁA, Polish citizen would have been ratted out by Pope Benedict XVI, member of the Hitler Jugend (Hitler Youth) for studying for the priesthood, in a Krackow second. Irony is well and truly dead.

Unknown to many members of the church, however, Ratzinger’s past includes brief membership of the Hitler Youth movement and wartime service with a German army anti- aircraft unit.

Sobering thought on the choice of titleholders for the Popemobile, doncha think? As barndog says in comments below: "Wait... listen to that sound -
The sound you hear is sensible Catholics leaving the church in droves. "

Methinks he's hit on the head.

This just makes me so sad. Yet again, the Air Force Academy is making headlines for all the wrong reasons.

Less than two years after it was plunged into a rape scandal, the Air Force Academy is scrambling to address complaints that evangelical Christians wield so much influence at the school that anti-Semitism and other forms of religious harassment have become pervasive.

There have been 55 complaints of religious discrimination at the academy in the past four years, including cases in which a Jewish cadet was told the Holocaust was revenge for the death of Jesus and another was called a Christ killer by a fellow cadet.
...
Critics of the academy say the sometimes-public endorsement of Christianity by high-ranking staff has contributed to a climate of fear and violates the constitutional separation of church and state at a taxpayer-supported school whose mission is to produce Air Force leaders.
...
"They are deliberately trivializing the problem so that we don't have another situation the magnitude of the sex assault scandal. It is inextricably intertwined in every aspect of the academy," said Mikey Weinstein of Albuquerque, N.M., a 1977 graduate who has sent two sons to the school. He said the younger, Curtis, has been called a "filthy Jew" many times.

The superintendent, Lt. Gen. John Rosa, conceded there was a problem during a recent meeting of the Board of Visitors, the civilian group that oversees the academy.

"The problem is people have been across the line for so many years when you try and come back in bounds, people get offended," he said.

The board chairman, former Virginia Gov. James Gilmore, warned Rosa that changing things could prove complicated. He said evangelical Christians "do not check their religion at the door.

His attitude was what kept the Armed Forces segregated until post-WWII. Change a few words there, and you can just hear the good ol' boy in him talking about how we just couldn't make those changes to let the "coloreds" into the service, because "southern gentlemen just don't check their prejudices at the door". Fuckwit.

The USAF is still the younger step-child in DoD. Where the other branches have traditions and processes, not all good, not all bad, the AF from my experience working with them, has few. They are making it up as they go along. Literally.

In the Navy, there were two subjects taboo in the Wardroom (and indeed in many social and work situations) Religion and Sex. Both were considered too personal for discussion. Despite my personal dislike for organized religion, I have to say I never met a Navy Chaplain I did not like and respect. They did good work, and were dedicated to seeing to the needs of those who wanted their ministry. They never interfered with those of us that didn't.

I think the AF Academy could learn a little something by not just forcing it's cadets and staff to go a 50-minute seminar, but by rethinking their approach to allowing Evangelical Christians to actively engage cadets on campus. They might, IMHO, want to remember what happens when one of these hot-shot little shitheads gets to their version of the "fleet" and starts his/her own personal crusade in a unit that's not as receptive or homogenous as the Academy. What do they do when their CO and other officers are of another faith? Begin a whisper campaign against the CO? Trash their department heads? Yeah, there's some good military order and discipline.

The Air Force and especially the Academy is doing these cadets a disservice by not putting a halt to this now. Fuck Gilmore and his wishy-washy mealy-mouthed approach. He already ruined an entire state (Virginia) by sucking it dry of revenue, now he's going to get to ruin a branch of the military too?

It oughtta be a cut-pass for this bozo. It looks like the senate might actually give old John Bolton a wave-off. Good for them. 'Course the deal ain't done till the fat lady sings, but this looks pretty good:

John R. Bolton's nomination to be ambassador to the United Nations suffered a setback yesterday when the Senate Foreign Relations Committee unexpectedly decided to spend three more weeks investigating allegations that he mistreated subordinates, threatened a female government contractor and misled the committee about his handling of classified materials.
...
The action was a blow to President Bush, who nominated Bolton, ...

Yeah, we don't need no stinking oversight.

The Transportation Security Administration has failed to stop excessive spending, raising concerns of "unethical and possibly illegal activities" by employees who spent $500,000 on artwork and silk plants for a new operations center, according to a government report released yesterday.

The Department of Homeland Security's inspector general blamed TSA management for allowing "waste and abuse" in a $19 million project to build an operations center in Herndon. The facility is a communication center for the agency and monitors all transportation security incidents.
...
Working under a self-imposed deadline in 2003 and with little oversight, some TSA employees spared little expense to outfit the new Transportation Security Operations Center, ignored federal contracting rules and appeared to conceal their spending, according to the inspector general's report. When the center opened in September 2003, it included a 4,200-square-foot gym for 79 employees that cost $350,000; seven kitchens outfitted with numerous appliances, including Sub-Zero refrigerators costing $3,000 each; and large offices -- even for lower-level employees -- equipped with cable television at a cost of $63,099 for three years.

I guess I am objectively pro-terror if I call Bullshit on any government agency buying Sub-Zero refrigerators for its employees. I guess I want the terrarists™ to "win" whatever the fuck that means anymore because I see red when I hear about irresponsible shit like this. These are the jerk-offs who tell the TSA workers in the airports to take our fucking sneakers off because we might have WMD's hidden in our laces. Well, I guess since they weren't in Iraq, some deskbound braintrust in Herndon, VA figures they have to be somewhere...probably in some old Navy vets shoe laces.

I guess this is just another in the long line of great examples of what happens when morons control the government. It goes from being government of the people to something the Founding Fathers would not recognize today.

I wonder how the IG at DHS will like inspecting salmon fisheries for terrarists™ in Alaska next summer?

So, they picked a new Pope o'Rome. Gee, another in the long line of child-abusing pedophile supporters to shelter his "true faith" from accountability. Read a quote, thought it seemed as though it applied to another religious fanatic across the pond:

...He said the new pope had long been mischaracterized as an out-of-touch, inflexible ideologue, when in person he had shown himself to be "relaxed and very warmhearted."

I'm guessing that the college o'cardinals needed to make a quick decision so they could all head off to warmer climes on the churches' buck and piss and moan about how collections are down. Hey, yo...Cardinal Shit-for-brains, sell a Michaelangelo or something. Not like you'd actually miss it yo, there's probably dozens seized by church officials from the houses of "blasphemers" and such all over Europe during the churches 2000 year reign of terror...first "infidels/blasphemers/non-believers" then kids. What a swell bunch of guys.

It's a good thing my hairy thunderer can beat up their hairy thunderer. Nah Nah.

Update: Oh, and if it was not already evident that I disliked this guy, here's another reason:

German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the
Vatican theologian who was elected Pope Benedict XVI, intervened in the 2004 US election campaign ordering bishops to deny communion to abortion rights supporters including presidential candidate
John Kerry.

In a June 2004 letter to US bishops enunciating principles of worthiness for communion recipients, Ratzinger specified that strong and open supporters of abortion should be denied the Catholic sacrament, for being guilty of a "grave sin."

He specifically mentioned "the case of a Catholic politician consistently campaigning and voting for permissive abortion and euthanasia laws," a reference widely understood to mean Democratic candidate Kerry, a Catholic who has defended abortion rights.

The letter said a priest confronted with such a person seeking communion "must refuse to distribute it."

Little Putzie makes with the big crocodile tears in his waste of electrons (and dead trees) today about how the Newspaper Bidness idn't makin' no money.

"Eight or nine Washington, D.C.-area lawyers, government workers and other residents sat around a conference table in an office building. They were strangers, all younger than 45, all had moved to the region within the last five years. None subscribed to the Washington Post.

"An affable session leader from Boston began by asking about their daily routines and news habits. About an hour and 15 minutes later, he opened a cabinet, removed a stack of Posts and dropped them on a conference table. 'What if I told you that you could have a six-month subscription free?' he asked them.

Senators May Have Named CIA Operative

Tuesday, April 12, 2005; Page A10

Senators may have blown the cover of a covert CIA officer yesterday.

You mean the Fulton Armstrong that was National Intelligence Officer for Latin America? Because that's what he's called here at a Council for Foreign Relations Seminar in October 2001.

The same Fulton Armstrong who's public bio is here?

Care to consider that the National Intelligence office is part of the CIA?

The same Fulton Armstrong who was publicly criticized by the Bush Administration back in January 2004?

That is ONE fucking minute and ONE google search.

Nice reporting there Anne.

And the little idiot wants to know why no one wants to have all their news (or even any of it) come from the Post...why, it's as plain as the nose on his face.

I love it when I see pictures of Preznit Wasted Sperm standing in the crowds at Ft Hood, or some other military installation. All those soldiers, or sailors or airmen or Marines looking at him and he looks like the little boy emperor that he is. Sort of reminds me of Joaquin Phoenix's character in Gladiator, the Emperor Comitus. I guess that the biggest reason that he likes to go there is that by law, no one can criticize him, flip him off, moon him or otherwise show their feelings. What a shame.

President Bush, delivering a pep talk to troops at an Army post in Texas, said today that U.S. forces in Iraq increasingly are playing a "supporting role" in what he called a "new phase" of security operations there. He said this would eventually allow U.S. troops to come home, but he set no timetable.

Wearing an Army jacket and surrounded by troops in berets and camouflage uniforms at Fort Hood, Tex., Bush said he has spoken with Iraq's new president and speaker of parliament, who were chosen last week by the country's recently elected National Assembly.

I wonder if he'd be brave enough to face an equal number of non-military, un-screened fellow citizens and say exactly the same thing? Magic 8-Ball says: You've Gotta Be Fucking Kidding Me.

I love this:

He said the toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue in Baghdad on April 9, 2003, "will be recorded alongside the fall of the Berlin Wall as one of the great moments in the history of liberty."

Beloved Leader, ever one to bring on the Criminals, has his Intelligence Czar-to-be speaking in no uncertain terms:

John D. Negroponte, President Bush's choice to be the country's first director of national intelligence, vowed today to make needed changes in the U.S. intelligence system but said he could not yet spell out how he intends to carry out the job.

And what the fuck is up with everything being a "Czar" position? Do we go with the Romanov Cabinet next? Is Karl Rove actually Rasputin reincarnated? Jeebus.

John Bolton no more deserves to be the UN Ambassador than the man-in-the-moon. M-O-O-N spells Snivelling Lackey. (apologies to Mssr. King, but what's up with all the self-referential stuff in DT VII?)...anyhow back to the latest incompetent up for promotion by the 1600 Crew (latest in a long line, no?)

Mr. Bolton also suggested Monday that his history of deep skepticism about the United Nations - he has said the organization was corrupt, mismanaged and sometimes represented views antithetical to American values - would help, not hinder, him. He said it would give him the credibility among American critics of the world body that would make it easier to work for substantial change in the United Nations.

Well, it's all the rage these days with the Wingnuts - destroy something to improve it...they despise the Constitution and want to improve it too, by feeding it to the shredder one amendment at a time...so why not Bolton too? I guess all Bolton needs to do to round out his Conservitard Creds is threaten a federal judge or two and get his John Birch Society Blazer back from the cleaners.

No fools the Poles. They seem to know to GTFOD* while the getting is somewhat good...

Poland will withdraw its 1,700 soldiers from Iraq after their U.N. mandate expires at the end of this year, the defense minister said Tuesday, giving the first definitive timetable for ending a deployment that was very unpopular with Polish citizens.

A sad and unintended consequence of the Mess in Mesopotamia: abandoned pets.

The 32 dogs look up with sad eyes or wag their tails as animal control officer Linda Cordry walks the row of chain-link cages toward a door concealing a gas chamber. "These guys are mine," Cordry says with weary resignation. "These are basically on Death Row."
...
"I would say 95 percent of these animals come from military homes," says Beate Hall, who runs the humane shelter where dozens of soldiers and Army spouses began dumping pets during the holidays.
...
Cordry says she's found an abundance of dogs in military neighborhoods — from emaciated dogs in back yards of vacated homes to puppies left in Dumpsters.

Many of the abandoned pets are wearing collars, but with their tags removed. Animals with collars get up to 10 days before they're euthanized. Those without collars are spared for only three.

Just another aspect of the on-going immorality of the 1600 Crew...another day, another outrage.

I guess that we're headed toward that actual big-brother society that the wingnuts claim could never happen...

The White House is maintaining extraordinary restrictions on information about the detention of high-level terror suspects, permitting only a small number of members of Congress to be briefed on how and where the prisoners are being held and interrogated, senior government officials say.
...
By law, the White House is required to notify the House and Senate Intelligence Committees of all intelligence-gathering activities. But the White House has taken the stance that the secret detention program is too sensitive to be described to any members other than the top Republican and Democrat on each panel.

Bwahahahaha...Just kidding.

A former senior intelligence official said the main reason for the secrecy was to prevent information about where the prisoners were being held from being publicly disclosed. Such a disclosure, the official said, would almost certainly cause host governments to force the C.I.A. to shut down the detention operations being carried out on their soil.

I was meandering across blogtopia the other night while I was waiting for some equipment to reboot and found this about David Horowitz, the man who would bring conservative group-think to Academia:

Horowitz was the son of communist parents and grew up in an extremely left-wing household in Queens. His father, a high school teacher, was fired in 1952 for "insubordination" after he refused to answer when questioned whether or not he was a communist. As early as his teens, he was going to left-wing protests. He graduated from Columbia and went to Berkeley for graduate studies in English, jumping into the fray with the protests against the House Unamerican Activities Committee in the late 1950s. He penned a slim book/rant called Student (1962) about those years, which inspired none other than Mario Savio, one of the leaders of the west coast activist counterculture, to head to west, because "Berkeley is the place".

He married and went to Europe for the next several years, working with socialist intellectuals, but returned to California in 1968 to work for Ramparts, a key 1960s leftist publication. The following year, Robert Scheer, the old comrade of Horowitz who had asked him to return and work with him was ousted, and Horowitz and Peter Collier took the helm. But they were nowhere near as successful as Scheer and Warren Hinckle, and Ramparts died in 1975.

Jean Genet, the famous French playwright, made a fateful call in 1974 to the offices of Ramparts looking for a translator. Genet was a vocal supporter of The Black Panthers, and soon enough Horowitz was hanging out with Huey Newton. But the Panthers of 1974 were not the Panthers of the 60s. Horowitz fell in with the Panthers at a time when many left-wingers, black and white, were abandoning them because they were becoming increasingly violent and more interested in dealing drugs than community development. Newton himself was using cocaine and soon fled to Cuba after shooting a prostitute.

When asked to find a bookkeeper for the Panthers, he suggested a white woman named Betty Van Patter, a former Ramparts employee. Horowitz had been under the spell of the Panthers, to the point of denouncing a black sociologist he had attempted to recruit as an uncle Tom. But as he grew more disenchanted, he also grew more wary, fearful for himself and his family. He didn't warn Van Patter because he worried that she would denounce him to the Panthers because she didn't entirely trust Horowitz.

A month later her body was discovered in San Francisco Bay. No one was arrested or charged, but everyone, right or left, pretty much agrees that she was killed by the Panthers after nosing around in some of their illegal activities. Except, of course, the Panthers.

The death of Betty Van Patter is Horowitz's Rosebud, his white whale. He was racked with guilt over her death and his failure to warn her. His marriage collapsed and he began to lose his left-wing friends as he headed rightward. In 1984 he voted for Ronald Reagan. By the late 80s, he was writing speeches for Bob Dole and working to pass anti-affirmative action Proposition 209 in California.

The 90s for Horowitz were marked by one tirade after another as he embraced all the cliches of the right, attacking everything and everyone from homosexuals to John Kenneth Galbraith. Some of his more prominent publications include Hating Whitey, an amusingly titled anti-black tirade, and The Art of Political War, a blueprint for Republican attack campaigns.

Many of you first heard of Horowitz because of his manufactured controversy regarding the anti-slavery reparations rant he attempted to place in a number of college campus newspapers. Frankly, it's not that hard to make college students do stupid things, and as much as Horowitz rants and raves about censorship, he clearly knew exactly what was going to happen and provoked this "controversy" to promote himself and his agenda. And the idea that campus newspapers were a hotbed of liberal censorship and not conservative censorship was easily and cleverly disproven when another Salon writer attempted to place ads in college newspapers claiming that "GOD IS AN ABORTIONIST". But that doesn't get on the Sunday morning talk shows, while Horowitz does.

While I was researching and writing this, I couldn't help but develop a sympathy for Horowitz I didn't have before. Really. But as sorry as I feel for him (and for Van Patter), his anti-left crusade is nothing but an attempt to exorcise the guilt he feels about Van Patter's death. He has taken the murder of one woman by a small band of thugs and inflated that to indict an entire political movement, branding it as so evil that anything goes, including racism, homophobia, and manipulating facts. He is an uncritical fanatic who has merely exchanged one fanaticism for another.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the whole dead Pontiff white smoke thing has been going on for centuries, right? The way that the media is reporting it makes it seem like it's a new idea, perhaps one that a priest came up with following a night of carousing on the Via Veneto with an altar boy, or something.

Responding to Pope John Paul II's request, the Vatican will depart from centuries-old tradition by ringing bells in addition to sending up white smoke to signal the election of his successor.
...
John Paul will be laid to rest with a white silk veil on his face, a rosary in his hands and his body clad in liturgical vestments and the white miter. Following the centuries-old custom for burying popes, his body will be placed inside three coffins — wood, zinc and wood — a design meant to slow decomposition, the Vatican confirmed.
...
"This time we plan to ring the bells to make the election of the pope clearer," he said, recalling wrong calls in past elections. "This way even journalists will know," ...

So where is Father Guido Sarducci when you need him anyway?

"The Republicans have become the party of the Bible. The Democrats need to stand up and become the party of the Constitution."

Fuckin' A Right.

I have been toying with the idea of a new blog...a photo blog (should be up in about a week or so). I was going to try a different approch to it...I would like to do some parts as sort of "photo-journalistic". Here's what I'm thinking: there are tons of blogs with pictures of peoples cats/flowers/kids etc...and they all have their place. What I would like to do, is to have you all (if you're interested) come up with "assignments" to augment what I'm going to do anyhow. It might be interesting and would certainly lead to some interesting aspects of the interactivity of blogging.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Slings ... Arrows?

Is it just me, or was there something so wrong about the deserting, drunken, cowardly, craven bastard being the person to award a posthumous Medal of Honor to an incredibly brave soldier who put his men above himself? Has there ever been a time in the life of Bunnypants when he has put the needs of others before his own?

I mean, it's like seeing Beloved Leader go to the Wall. You just have a feeling that one of those 58,000 ghosts will appear and ask him: "Where the fuck were you, really?".

He has no more business being at a Medal of Honor ceremony than he does wearing a flight suit with gratuitous Navy Wings on it... what a fucking low-life.

The whole No Child Left Behind thing has always made me just a little crazy. I am fortunate enough to not have a kid in public school now, and I'm grateful for small favors, believe me...when the guppy was in public school, her days were consumed with rote memorization of materials for the Virginia "achievment" tests. What a sick joke that system has become. Now the 1600 Crew wants to change the deal again...danger Will Robinson...and I see no mention of funding these changes...

Education Secretary Margaret Spellings plans to fundamentally change enforcement of the No Child Left Behind law, giving preferential treatment to states that prove they're serious about raising achievement, Bush administration officials say.
...
"Who is going to decide whether you have a different level of commitment than another state?" Sullivan said. "Will it matter whether you're a red or blue state? Will it matter whether you have something pending in your state legislature to send the federal money back?"

Remember, second-rate legal talent is hard to find and important to this country. Especially lawyers who have had their lips firmly implanted on Beloved Leaders scrotum for literally decades...

Go figure that Abu Gonzales, the man who terms the Geneva Convention "quaint" wants to renew the most un-thoughtout bill in the history of the republic in full, just 'cause.

The nation's two top law enforcement officials urged Congress yesterday to fully renew the USA Patriot Act, arguing that the controversial anti-terrorism law needs only minor tweaking to address the concerns of critics from both sides of the political spectrum.

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that the efforts of the FBI and federal prosecutors to track and stop al Qaeda operatives would be severely hampered if 16 provisions set to expire at the end of the year are not renewed.

From the Chip Diller "All is Well" Department:

A huge bomb exploded near a bus filled with Iraqi soldiers returning from leave Tuesday, killing at least three and wounding at least 44 in an attack that showed how even a payroll issue in Iraq can turn deadly.

The Iraqi soldiers were en route to a U.S. base here from the city of Sinjar, where they had dropped off their monthly pay. Because Iraq's banking system cannot accommodate direct deposits, recruits are given a week's leave each month to carry their money home -- a system that has created chronic security problems and hampered the U.S. military's efforts to develop Iraq's new army.

Could it be that the House o' Hubris that Tommy built is collapsing around him? We can only hope...

A six-day trip to Moscow in 1997 by then-House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) was underwritten by business interests lobbying in support of the Russian government, according to four people with firsthand knowledge of the trip arrangements.

DeLay reported that the trip was sponsored by a Washington-based nonprofit organization. But interviews with those involved in planning DeLay's trip say the expenses were covered by a mysterious company registered in the Bahamas that also paid for an intensive $440,000 lobbying campaign.
...
House members bear some responsibility to ensure that the sponsors for their travel are not masquerading for registered lobbyists or foreign government interests, legal experts say. House ethics rules bar the acceptance of travel reimbursement from registered lobbyists and foreign agents.

In this case, travel funds did not come directly from lobbyists; the money came from a firm, Chelsea Commercial Enterprises Ltd., that funded the lobbying campaign, according to the sources. Chelsea was coordinating the effort with a Russian oil and gas company -- Naftasib -- that has business ties with Russian security institutions, the sources said.

I have a feeling that pretty soon (and we can only hope), that Mr. "I am the Federal Government" Delay's career will be on a ... feeding tube. I wonder if he'll get born again in prison denims like Chucky Colson, hey, that'll give him a whole new avenue of access to the 1600 Crew....

Hi guys, miss me? I had to make an emergency trip to our nation's capital to fix some stuff over the weekend, and was up for about 40 or so hours...so I missed getting to snark on the Dead Pontiff and stuff.

Back tonight...thanx for your patience and for dropping by even though I was

-ahem-

UA.

1. Rummy's Rimjob
   
2. Republican Whorespeak
   
3. Having a Calvin Ball
   
4. Is Powerslime on this yet?
   
5. Sanctimonius American Adulterer
   
6. Stoopid Media
   
7. Oh, Harry...
   
8. Abu G-Rape
   
9. What he Said
   
10. When a Shocker, isn't