Good Saturday Morning, y'all. Just thought I'd drop by and let you know that the Fish Family is off for our annual summer sojourn. I don't know if there will be internet connectivity where we're going, and if there is, how much it might cost. So, I might not get to annoy you until next Sunday.

With all that in mind, remember, there are plenty great folks over there ----->
to keep you entertained. And if you can you go donate to Richard Cranium's fund for Latoyia Figueroa if you have a spare buck or two, that would be most awesome! For the less than the price of a movie ticket, you can help a worthwhile cause.

Also (and this almost caused major havoc in our household, because I wanted to blow off the vacation for a week to go) head on down to the OH-2 and volunteer for Hackett. I was going to go, but since the Mrs had already made plans for us to be elsewhere, I lost the argument about putting off the trip for a couple of weeks (something to do with deposits, availability, unhappy kids and divorce).

So have a great week. I'm looking forward to seeing a new Democratic congressman down in southern OH-IO when we get back.

Be safe, and don't forget to write! (Oh, that's what I'm supposed to do, I get it now....).

Peace.

This certainly goes into the running for one of the D'OH! newspaper ledes of 2005:

Efforts to rebuild water, electricity and health networks in Iraq are being shortchanged by higher-than-expected costs to provide security and by generous financial awards to contractors, according to a series of reports by government investigators released yesterday.

Taken together, the reports seem to run contrary to the Bush administration's upbeat assessment that reconstruction efforts are moving vigorously ahead and that the insurgency is dying down.

With nothing better to do, like you know budgetary oversight, instigating impeachement proceedings against Preznit Stolen Election, or any other worthwhile stuff like making sure soldiers have body armor before the NRA gets to write the legislative agenda...congress has passed this worthy bit o' legislation, rewriting the line of succession to the White House:

The Senate approved a bill Tuesday to raise the homeland security secretary from last to eighth place in the presidential line of succession, just after the attorney general.
...
The Constitution ... requires that the president be a natural-born citizen, so Gutierrez, born in Cuba, and Chao, born in Taiwan, would be ineligible.

From CNN tonight:

Army: Mental ills worsen after troops return

A survey of troops returning from the Iraq war found 30 percent had developed mental health problems three to four months after coming home, the Army's surgeon general said Thursday.

The problems include anxiety, depression, nightmares, anger and an inability to concentrate, according to Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley and other military medical officials.

A smaller group, usually with more severe cases of these symptoms, is diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.

When's the D-R-A-F-T? Because I don't know about you, but I doubt that Operation Mid-Term Retreat is going to be a rousing success. Preznit Utterly Incapable has not proven a deft hand at much other than sliming opponents, gathering the wrath of the free world, sending my grandchildren into enternal debt bondage so his kiddies can inherit the family's stolen wealth tax-free someday and pretty much crushed the reputation of the United States for oh, say, the next five decades or so.

So he's got that going for him. Stop by again, and I'll tell you how I really feel about Beloved Leader.

Returning troops with mental health issues do not good photo-ops make. Thus spake Rove. Sorry, no Bunnypants for you.

Hey! This is encouraging. The Ohio GOP is getting their talking points out there, and continuing to lie to their own base while doing it:

The chairman of the Ohio Republican Party insisted Monday that GOP state officials will find and punish those responsible for the political scandals engulfing Columbus - no matter where the investigations lead.
...
"We will ferret out the wrongdoers," he said. "Republicans will clean out any bad apples in their own house."

Bennett blamed the scandal involving the loss of $200 million in investments at the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation on both Democrats and Republicans.

Two of the members of the bureau's nine-member advisory board are Democrats, he said.

"It's a bipartisan scandal, and there ought to be a bipartisan solution," Bennett said. emphasis added

If the republicans lose Ohio next year, will they find some small (or large) town in their stronghold in southern Ohio and rename it, oh, I don't know, Jonestown?

So, the 2006 Mid-terms are coming up and the political coat-tails of Preznit Prevaricating Pendejo are growing shorter by the week. At the current rate that the approval ratings are going, by the them the run-up to the 2006 elections gets here, candidates are going to be hitting up lobbyists for money to send Beloved Leader on yet another undeserved vacation to keep him away from their districts. Which would be kind of funny in an ironic, not humorous way...basically seeing Commander Cucumber Crotch getting paid-off for yet another in a long string of life-ling failures.

Or, they could just withdraw all the troops from Iraq, and let it simultaneously descend in the Chaos and 12th Century as it becomes a wholly-owned subsidiary of Irani Sha'ria, Inc.

The top U.S. military leader in Iraq said Wednesday there could be substantial withdrawals of some of the 135,000 U.S. troops in the country as early as next spring.

Gen. George W. Casey said that despite continued lethal attacks by insurgents, the security situation in Iraq had improved.

"If the political process continues to go positively, and if the development of the security forces continues to go as it is going, I do believe we'll still be able to take some fairly substantial reductions after these elections in the spring and summer," Casey said before meeting with Jafari.
...
Failing to meet the deadline for passage of a new constitution "would be very harmful to the momentum that's necessary," Rumsfeld told reporters traveling with him to Baghdad. "We have troops on the ground there, people get killed," he said.

"The great desire of the Iraqi people is to see the coalition forces be on their way out as they take more responsibility," Jafari said at a news conference with Rumsfeld after their noon meeting in Baghdad.

But Jafari said a withdrawal would require "picking up the pace of training Iraqi forces," as well as carefully synchronizing the U.S. withdrawal as Iraqi forces took charge of different parts of the country.

So I tagged him with Justice French Fry, which I kinda like, but perhaps it's time to change it to Justice Bad News. John Roberts is 1600 Crew company man right down the line. He's getting his "ambassadorship" for working the 2000 Elections to help put Preznit Minimal Intellect into the White House and fuck the nation. If some of this does not start to constitute "extraordinary circumstances" in the minds of some of the Democrats on the so-called "gang of 14", then they ought to just retire to their lobbyist-paid for villas now and quit fucking up the country.

He favored less government enforcement of civil rights laws rather than more. He criticized court decisions that required a thick wall between church and state. He took the side of prosecutors over criminal defendants. He maintained that the role of the courts should be limited and the powers of the president enhanced.

So there it is, the complete Fascist American package. Allowing this guy on the court might be the biggest mistake the Democrats could, make. He's likely to have a tenure of 30 years. I'll make another prediction: He's gonna get the nod for Chief Justice if Rehnquist retires. Why? Because he's not going to go off the reservation and he's younger than Scalia. Fat Tony has made too many ideological enemies to get confirmed easily. Thomas doesn't have the intellectual candlepower to take the job and be seen as a credible Chief Justice. Roberts fits the bill, and will be Beloved Leaders Venereal Disease for the Generations: a foul, intractable gift that keeps on giving.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with owning a firearm. If you are so inclined, handle it safely, keep it secure and use it for something, you know legal, like target-shooting or hunting, or even self-protection, fine. It's not worth the argument anymore over guns and personal rights. I'm uncomfortable with the whole Assault Rifle thing, but it's an issue that's not going to be won until people's attitudes fundamentally change about needing a weapon like that.

On the other hand, this NRA effort to defend gun manufacturers goes one step too far. Maybe it's time to not worry about Gun Control, but Lobbyist Control. The NRA is now by having bought and paid for most of the 55 republican senators, controlling the agenda in the senate, and that's a disgrace.

Senate Republicans on Tuesday moved the National Rifle Association's top priority ahead of a $491 billion defense bill, setting up a vote on legislation to shield firearms manufacturers and dealers from lawsuits over gun crimes.
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Gun opponents say the bill effectively exempts gun manufacturers from liability. They also say dealers sometimes allow the weapons to get into the hands of people the law says shouldn't have them.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the gun industry gave 88 percent of its campaign contributions, or $1.2 million, to Republicans in the 2004 election cycle. Gun control advocates funneled 98 percent of their contributions, or $93,700, to Democrats.

That would be some term limits I could support.

The GOP in Illinois' Cook County, which I understand is a lot like the Democratic Party in Mississippi, all sound no fury, has offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to provable claims of malfeasance against Chicago mayor, Richard Daley.

The Cook County Republican Party is offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to an indictment and conviction of Mayor Richard M. Daley, whose administration has been buffeted by scandal.

So, Richard, Mr. Mayor, Buddy...you're on your own. Cook County? Skeletons? Pope? Catholic?.

I don't think I'll be going to New York anytime soon. I'll miss all the good Indian restaurants, I'll miss my favorite pizza place, Johns. I'll miss going to the American Museum of Natural History and walking through the glass-walled canyons of mid-town. I'm not going to a be a tourist in a city where the republican mayor is making everyone be afraid of their own shadow. The strength and resilience of new Yorkers came out on 9/11 and all the days after. It was inspirational.

But Bloomberg has taken the little shove of the London Bombings to open the floodgates of paranoia in New York. People who wanted desperately to believe that it couldn't happen again and had gotten on with their lives were pushed back to the brink of believing that disaster was just around the corner, and that swarthy people might be the agents of their destruction.

The concerns over a possible terror attack on a New York city tour bus emerged just before noon on Sunday, when a supervisor with Gray Line, the bus company, approached a police captain in Midtown Manhattan to tell him that five suspicious men had just boarded one of the company's famous red double-decker buses, No. 320.
...
The emerging details of the incident in and around Times Square, provided chiefly by the police, have begun to shape a fuller picture of what became a wild scene at one of New York's busiest tourist attractions: police officers ordering tourists to put their hands up, bomb-sniffing dogs climbing aboard the bus, and five men who appeared to be South Asian winding up handcuffed and lined up in a row on their knees. They were questioned and then released.

Yeah, I'll miss New York. I just don't want to participate in the republicans 24/7 FearFest. So I'll go visit, I don't know, San Francisco or Chicago or something. They don't seem to have mayors who are scared shitless about dropping poll numbers.

Several days ago there was an article in the NYTimes about the disconnect that returning servicemen feel when they are coming home. Where's the shared sacrifice of a nation at war, they ask?

From bases in Iraq and across the United States to the Pentagon and the military's war colleges, officers and enlisted personnel quietly raise a question for political leaders: if America is truly on a war footing, why is so little sacrifice asked of the nation at large?

There is no serious talk of a draft to share the burden of fighting across the broad citizenry, and neither Republicans nor Democrats are pressing for a tax increase to force Americans to cover the $5 billion a month in costs from Iraq, Afghanistan and new counterterrorism missions.

But Ms. Schmidt is a proven battler, having bested several better-known candidates, including Pat DeWine, the son of Senator Mike DeWine, in the primary. She contends that although voters respect Mr. Hackett's military service, it will not be the deciding factor.

At the Warren County fair, where Ms. Schmidt bought a 230-pound pig from a 9-year-old girl and watched a demolition derby, Charles Hartman, a Democrat turned Republican, agreed.

"It's a positive thing for him," Mr. Hartman, a substance-abuse specialist with a nonprofit group, said after meeting Ms. Schmidt. "But we're not at war here."

Paul Hackett says that if he doesn't win the race, he'll be volunteering to go back to Iraq next year. It's War there.

So the 1600 Crew does not want the Senate to get access to all of the papers and work product of Justice French Fry, to see how his little Federalist Society mind works? Really...

Republican and Democratic senators clashed today on whether the administration was cooperating enough in releasing thousands of pages of documents from earlier in the career of Judge John G. Roberts, President Bush's nominee for the Supreme Court.
...
Senator Leahy's view, expressed on Sunday on the ABC News program "This Week," is that lawyers in the solicitor general's office are not covered by some blanket attorney-client privilege because "they are working for you and me, and all the American people," not the president.

Another Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, said he, too, was disappointed "that the administration has so quickly closed the door on providing Judge Roberts's documents to the Judiciary Committee."

I think that not releasing all the papers of Justice French Fry might constitute some of those "extraordinary circumstances". After all, without those papers, how could we know whether or not ol' French Fry is telling the truth about himself, you know, like he did about his Federalist Society membership?

Spreadin' democracy is almost as hard a job as findin' Osama, cause you know Preznit'n is hard, hard work. (right after vacation, recess, nap time, fallin' off bicycles, and brush clearin')

The back-to-back nature of the deadly attacks in Egypt and London, as well as similarities in the methods used, suggests that the al Qaeda leadership may have given the orders for both operations and is a clear sign that Osama bin Laden and his deputies remain in control of the network, according to interviews with counterterrorism analysts and government officials in Europe and the Middle East.

KERRY: Six months after he said Osama bin Laden must be caught dead or alive, this president was asked, "Where is Osama bin Laden?" He said, "I don't know. I don't really think about him very much. I'm not that concerned."

BUSH: Bush: Gosh, I just don' think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden. It's kind of one of those exaggerations.

FACT CHECK: Bush stumbled when he denied making some remarks about Osama bin Laden that Kerry had accurately paraphrased. In fact, Bush said almost exactly what Kerry quoted him as saying. It was in a news conference at the White House on March 13, 2002, after US forces had overturned the Taliban regime in Afghanistan:

Q: (March 13, 2002): Mr. President, in your speeches now you rarely talk or mention Osama bin Laden. Why is that?

BUSH: So I don't know where he is. You know, I just don't spend that much time on him , to be honest with you. I truly am not that concerned about him. I was concerned about him, when he had taken over a country.

The recent Supreme Court decision to allow municipalities to take private property to allow economic growth is probably going to give Justice Souter, who sided with the majority in making the decision a headache, because he's likely to lose the family home. Because the NH town he lives in is probably going to allow it to be turned into a hotel. Oooops. David Broder, writing about the Roberts nomination makes a point that goes to this very subject...does Souter possess the requisite awareness of decisions like Kelo and how they will actually affect people, not just as an abstract decision made in the hermetically-sealed chamber that is the Supreme Court?

Does Roberts have the wherewithal to understand the concern of Americans who will be affected by his decisions in their daily lives perhaps forever? Or is the rendering of any decision just an academic excercise taken to a different degree?

It's worth knowing when the senate begins questioning Justice French Fry whether his work as an Attorney for Toyota in the Carpal Tunnel case left him with a clear understanding of stakes for a woman who claimed an injury and might not be able to work again, courts and lawyers notwithstanding. Or the feelings of a 12 year-old girl shackled and dragged away for consuming a single french fry, when a citation might have sufficed.

I'm pretty sure Souter will soon be getting an education from the school of hard knocks...will his fellow justices learn from his lessons?

That whole "quaint" notion of doing the right thing...something long since gone with the 1600 Crew and their pet congresscriminals.

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales said yesterday that he spoke with White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. immediately after learning that the Justice Department had launched a criminal investigation into the leak of a CIA operative's identity. But Gonzales, who was White House counsel at the time, waited 12 hours before officially notifying the rest of the staff of the inquiry.
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Asked on CBS's "Face the Nation" about the report, Gonzales said the Justice Department had informed his office around 8 p.m. and that White House lawyers said he could wait until the next morning before notifying the staff. He did not say why he called Card.
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But he acknowledged telling one person: "the chief of staff. And immediately the next morning, I told the president. And shortly thereafter, there was notification sent out to all the members of the White House staff," Gonzales said.

And now ladies and gentlemen, the sound of their outrage at the perversion of our government:

[chirp] [chirp chirp] [chirp]
no crickets were harmed in composing this rant

This says it all:

The military should realize, calling for greater sacrifice is politically impossible for Bush. In a speech yesterday, Barabara Bush mentioned that she had 17 grandchildren. Number in Iraq? Zero.

That tells you all you need to know about how the Bush family feels about this war. And if they won't fight it, who else should?

Frank Rich on the Plame story.

The real crime here remains the sending of American men and women to Iraq on fictitious grounds. Without it, there wouldn't have been a third-rate smear campaign against an obscure diplomat, a bungled cover-up and a scandal that - like the war itself - has no exit strategy that will not inflict pain.

Well this just makes my Saturday night.

Americans are far more likely than the Japanese to expect another world war in their lifetime, according to AP-Kyodo polling 60 years after World War II ended. Most people in both countries believe the first use of a nuclear weapon is never justified.
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Americans are far more likely than the Japanese to expect another world war in their lifetime, according to AP-Kyodo polling 60 years after World War II ended. Most people in both countries believe the first use of a nuclear weapon is never justified.

Ah, bobtaft. Scion of once renowned and connected family. Friend of kings and Preznits. Generous to a fault to rare coin dealers everywhere or at least in Toledo.

Gov. Bob Taft was in Cincinnati yesterday on a bus tour across the state with U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt to hold town hall-style meetings about a new Medicare prescription drug program. The drug program begins next year.

He spoke with a group of reporters about the rare-coin scandal after the meeting.

"Mr. Noe was obviously not what he appeared to be. ... He misled many, many people," he said. "I think everybody was misled. The Bureau [of Workers Compensation] was misled, the state was misled, the people of Ohio were misled, I was misled, many people were misled, about the nature of Tom Noe."

Mr. Taft also responded to questions about how Mr. Noe began contributing to his campaign only a week after he transferred $1.375 million from the state rare-coin fund to his own accounts after receiving his first $25 million from the bureau in 1998.

"Mr. Noe was obviously not what he appeared to be." Oh, bobtaft, here's to hoping that you and your band of republican grifters can hang on for a little while longer; you're getting to the Delay Level of corrupt politicians, and we thank you for helping us march into 2006 with issues and your republican record for getting dirty money most politicians only dream of. What a shame it blew up at such an inconvenient time. So hang tough! Fight! Fight! Fight!

Oh, and how about dropping by the OH-2 race and lending some of your aura of electiblity to the republican candidate there. She's your kind of gal...a Delay Disciple through and through! She'd probably appreciate some tips on getting some good clean dirty cash, cause her opponent raised thousands of dollars from a couple of days of fundraising from Democrats on the internets. And that's not even a Trade Secret!

Here's a place to stop by this weekend if you have a few minutes. I always like to see more Vets putting up sites...it gives left blogtopia that certain ... air that the wingnut asshat Yellow Elephants just can't touch. Yeah? Damn Straight!

The 1600 Crew is back to denying reality on yet another front: Beloved Leader is back on the Social Security Bamboozapalooza Tour, Part whatever. I guess that now that he's ruining the country, accelerating our descent into fascism at an ever-increasing pace and just basically fucking up the America I love, he's finally gotten some love from his mommy.

With an assist from his mother, President Bush used the bully pulpit today in hopes of reinvigorating his bid to revamp Social Security, holding his first public discussion of the retirement program in a month.

The event came as the legislative schedule for action has slipped to September amid signs that many Republican lawmakers remain deeply wary about taking on what is often called "the third rail" of American politics.
...
Barbara Bush, the former first lady, praised her son as a bold leader determined to tread where other politicians dared not. "It's a political nightmare to talk about Social Security," she said. "And he's got the guts to do it."

Now, does the BitchBushMom want to tell us how brave and how much guts her half-wit offspring has for not showing up to do his service in the National Guard? After all, when the rubber met the road there, he was off in some rest area playing water-polo with ambitious secretaries and working on getting listed as a liver transplant recipient.

Hey, maybe someone at one of those "town meetings" can ask Preznit Lies Forever whether or not Karl Rove will be eligible for Social Security when he gets out of the Pen...

Got this in an email from a friend with an warped sense of humor:

A chicken and an egg are lying in bed. The chicken is leaning against the headboard smoking a cigarette, with a satisfied smile on it's face. The egg, looking a bit pissed off, grabs the sheet, rolls over, and says, "Well, I guess we finally answered THAT question"

Sydney Blumenthal writes the most perfect summation of the 1600 Crew:

So far as Bush is concerned, it's always either the day after 9/11 or the day before the Iraq invasion. Time stands still at two ideal political moments. But his consequences since are barely managed chaos.

Songs of a Quagmire Edition -

Unknown Soldier - Doors
For What it's Worth - Buffalo Springfield
Woodstock - Joni Mitchell
Sky Pilot - Eric Burdon and the Animals
War - Edwin Starr
Get Together - Youngbloods
What's Going On? - Marvin Gaye
Shipbuilding - Elvis Costello
Ohio - CSNY
Born in the USA - The Boss

Joni Mitchell singing about the "bomber death planes riding shotgun in the sky...turning into butterflies above our nation" has always been one of those lyrics that seems "stuck" in my head. It's not a bad thing.

via Glen over at A Brooklyn Bridge. I hardly ever do these, but this seemed to fit. Same attitude that got me in trouble with a boss of mine in the Navy. Here's the narrative from the 'test'.

An impassioned commander with more respect for individuals than for authority, you have a no-holds-barred approach to life and its obstacles.

I don't believe in the no-win scenario.

Bob Taft, now officially the 'nations worst governator' according to a recent SUSA poll (17% approval, I seem to recall), forced two other state officials to resign over not diclosing getting Free Golf. Mr. Taft, who did too...he'll be quitting about ....mmmm...never. Right.

An Ohio-based basketmaker revealed yesterday that it had paid Gov. Bob Taft's golf fees in September, 2003, but the embattled governor continued to refuse to provide details about that or any other outings he has failed to disclose on his annual financial disclosure statements.

The Newark-based Longaberger Co. filed an amended lobbying statement yesterday, disclosing that it gave Mr. Taft a $125 gift by paying his golf fees on Sept. 12, 2003.

State law requires officeholders to list each source of gifts over $75.
It is a first-degree misdemeanor to knowingly file a false ethics form, with a maximum penalty of six months in jail and/or a $1,000 fine.

Two high-ranking members of Mr. Taft's administration — Randy Fischer, executive director of the Ohio School Facilities Commission, and Ohio Turnpike Commission Executive Director Gino Zomparelli — previously have stepped down from their state posts because they failed to disclose golf outings.

But Mr. Taft has vowed he won't resign.

Seems to me that there were some more direct allegations of Free Golf with ol' Tom himself at a country club up in Toledo. Well, I'm sure it's all gonna come out in the wash...so to speak.

This court has gone deathly silent, the Cinderella story, outta no where, a former Governor now - about to become the Convict. It looks like a acqu - It's off to the Pen!

Does Mayor Mikey ride the subways in New York?

Police will begin random searches of bags and packages carried by people entering city subways, officials announced Thursday after a new series of bomb attacks in London.

Passengers carrying bags will be selected at random before they pass through turnstiles, and those who refuse to be searched won't be allowed to ride, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.

"We just live in a world where, sadly, these kinds of security measures are necessary," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. "Are they intrusive? Yes, a little bit. But we are trying to find that right balance."
...
Kelly said passengers selected for searches will be approached by officers, who will ask them what they are carrying, and request them to open their bags. If an officer looking for explosives finds some other form of contraband, police said that person would be subject to arrest.

Yeah, I know it's probably one of those wish-in-one-hand shit in the other things, but you have to wonder if Bloomberg really thinks this shit through or if it's just a reaction things that go bump in the night. I guess the only thing that could make this a real pain-in-the-ass would be if they put TSA in charge of the program...in between showing ID, taking off your shoes and trying to figure out if iPod earphone cords are bad, no one would ever get to an appointment.

Yes, let's all be afraid...it's soooo American now.

The most incredible shit just pops out of Joementum's mouth sometimes.

"This is a credible nominee, and not one that - as far as we know now - has a record that in any sense could be described as extremist," said Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, after a breakfast session with the Gang of 14, a bipartisan group that helped broker a deal in May to avert a Senate showdown over judicial nominees.

Holy Joe. Needs to Go. Fuck him.

Richard Cohen is a hack hack hackety hack hack. He writes a column about Justice French Fry and concludes it with this paragraph:

In effect, the fate of this nominee was settled back in the year 2000 when Florida, for better or for worse, squinted hard and pronounced George W. Bush its winner. The chads have spoken.

Everything that Billmon says. If Al Gore were nominating say, Edith Brown Clement as a 'consensus candidate', as conservative as she is, you know the republican slime machine would be in 24/7 overdrive from the moment that she was mentioned because she would be unacceptable to the folks at Focus on the Fetus and others in the wingnut contingent who control the republicans.

It's politics in the 21st Century. Rational discussion ended the day the Congress got the Starr Report. Maybe our kids will see it return, but me, I'm not too hopeful.

One of the most pernicious, and yet most believed lies that falls out of Fearless Leader's mouth has been that the Iraqi Army is getting ready to "take over" with just a skosh more training. Take over what, I'm not sure. Juan Cole has an excellent essay up written by a former Australian Army officer pointing out what it takes to train a soldier. His point: the training of the Iraqi's is failing and will continue to do so.

I am an Australian. A former Australian army officer, indeed. And I say that Australia could not send more than two battalions (it has only six, most understrength) to Iraq or anywhere else for more than a year without suffering terminal damage to its structure. And two battalions would not make the slightest contribution to the internal security of the country.

Further, I was a trainer of soldiers at one time. (For two years after I returned from Vietnam, in fact.) And I state without fear of contradiction by any professional that the Iraqi army will not be in any shape to operate effectively for many, many years, given the present training program, such as it is.

There was no pre-war planning for establishment of a new Iraqi army, and Rumsfeld has been fooled by pathetic yes-men generals to believe that an Iraqi army can be trained from scratch to be a useful force in a couple of years. This is nonsense. (Just as it is nonsense to say that the Afghan National Army is anywhere near being effective.) Let me tell you what it takes to train a soldier who comes off the streets and into barracks:

We have to presuppose clean barrack-room accommodation, including decent beds, lavatories, mess halls and showers; arrangements for pay that result in families receiving cash on time; and a welfare system that caters for both recruits and their families. There must be padres for all religious denominations. (Please stop laughing.)
...
All these instructors work their asses off for 12 weeks, for at least 12 hours a day, to produce a basic soldier. And let me emphasize that what they produce is the absolute BASIC soldier -- no more. The product is not a fighting man. He is incapable of employing his individual skills immediately in a team -- a fighting platoon - because there is much more to learn before joining his battalion.

The soldier (we are talking infantry, here ; forget the much longer training for technical arms and the administrative services) then has to go off to specialist training to fit him for his unit. This takes another two months or so. Then his theoretical knowledge is put into practice in the battalion, in which he is a member of a platoon. --- But he will only function reasonably if he joins a trained platoon of skilled soldiers who are themselves a team and who trust their commander and non-commissioned leaders.

There is no system in place any longer for that to happen in Iraq; the 1600 Crew disbanded it after the invasion, because they were out looking for candy and flowers in the streets along with those pesky still-unfound WMDs. Losers.

A couple of months ago, there was an interesting (and disturbing) story of a Tennessee teenager who was being sent off to be deprogrammed for being gay. Yes, here we are in the 21st Century and the Christo-Fascists still want to believe that a little jeebus and a little beatin'll drive the satan out of the kids. The young man who was sent off to the "reeducation" program run by a group of C-F's called "Love in Action", which makes them sound like religious right rambos, is due to be released. It's a newsworthy story, because of the amount of attention that the young man drew to himself when his blog was picked up and discussed world-wide on these here internets.

The young man, Zach had this on his blog:

"Stereotype me, if you dare,"

The New York Times ran the story of Zach and his journey in the Fashion and Style section.

Ah, Dick. Apparently there are some folks in Iraq who did not get the RNC/1600 Crew blast-fax'd happy-talk SITREP on Iraq.

Sunni Arab leaders said today that they were withdrawing temporarily from the writing of the new constitution after the assassination of two colleagues, a move that threatens to delay the drafting and undermine the legitimacy of the American-backed political process.

Remind me again what this waste of my tax dollars and the lives of our soldiers was for. A big-ass Lie? Yeah, thought so.

I like my caffeine as much as the next guy...maybe moreso somedays. I've stopped by Caribou Coffee on occasion. This is pretty interesting stuff (via Blah3).

Our compliance with Shari'ah principles may make it difficult for us to obtain financing and may limit the products we sell.

Our majority shareholder operates its business and makes its investments in a manner consistent with the body of Islamic principles known as Shari’ah. Consequently, we operate our business in a manner that is consistent with Shari’ah principles and will continue to do so for so long as Arcapita is a significant shareholder. Shari’ah principles regarding the lending and borrowing of money are complicated, requiring application of qualitative and quantitative standards. The negotiation and documentation of financing that is compliant with these principles are generally complex and time consuming. As such, if we have immediate liquidity needs, we may not be able to obtain financing that is compliant with Shari’ah principles on a timely basis. A Shari’ah-compliant company is prohibited from engaging in derivative hedging transactions such as interest rate swaps or futures, forward options or other instruments designed to hedge against changes in interest rates or the price of commodities we purchase. Also, a Shari’ah-compliant company is prohibited from dealing in the areas of alcohol, gambling, pornography, pork and pork-related products.

We may be subject to adverse publicity resulting from alleged statements about Arcapita or complaints or questions from our customers arising from such adverse publicity.

During 2002, we were subject to adverse publicity due to attempts to connect Arcapita with inflammatory and controversial statements made by one of its former outside advisors, in his individual capacity, regarding a variety of subjects, including events in the Middle East. We may be subject to similar adverse publicity in the future. Even if unfounded, such adverse publicity could divert our management’s time and attention and adversely affect the way our customers perceive us, our net sales or results of operations, in the aggregate or at individual coffeehouses, or the market price for shares of our common stock.

So Beloved Leader has nominated hisself a Soopreme Kort Justice. Beloved Leader's nominee is relatively colorless 50 year-old white guy with suitably conservative leanings (Federalist Society, clerked for Rehnquist, worked in Ken Starr's office) to suit the wingnuts. He has apparently written some on Roe v. Wade, although not much. He's got no track record really, which is a plus for Bunnypants and the Christo-Fascists, but since he was put on the DC Court of Appeals joined the majority on a ruling about a 12 year-old girl who was arrested and dragged away in handcuffs for eating one french fry aboard a DC Metro train. One French Fry. People, this is a guy who hates anyone's civil rights, the constitution and will be down-the-line supporter of the 1600 Crew's planned descent into fascism. While working in Bush I's solicitor general's office, Roberts wrote:

"We continue to believe that [Roe v. Wade] was wrongly decided and should be overruled. ... the Court's conclusions in Roe that there is a fundamental right to an abortion and that government has no compelling interest in protecting prenatal human life throughout pregnancy find no support in the text, structure, or history of the Constitution." ...

For a unanimous panel, denied the weak civil rights claims of a 12-year-old girl who was arrested and handcuffed in a Washington, D.C., Metro station for eating a French fry. Roberts noted that "no one is very happy about the events that led to this litigation" and that the Metro authority had changed the policy that led to her arrest. (Hedgepeth v. Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, 2004).

Other wonderful Roberts moments which are sure signs that we'll all be cherishing our pre-Orwellian Fascist Golden Years that were...he disagrees with the Endangered Species Act, says Congress can't make inconvenient rules. Also doesn't particularly care for Affirmative Action (he and Clarence will do so well together there). Other fun facts, he's written amicus briefs on behalf of Operation Rescue, and finally he really dislikes the disabled.

Lead counsel for Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Ky, Inc. v. Williams. The case involved a woman who was fired after asking Toyota for accommodations to do her job after being diagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome. The court ruled that while this condition impaired her ability to work, it did not impair her ability to perform major life activities. Disability rights groups fear that this decision may erode the Americans with Disabilities Act.

If we tag him with "Justice French Fry" that might get even some myopic Americans to say "whaaat?" and perhaps generate interest in keeping this guy off the court.

Back at Kos and Atrios they're pitching for "netroots" bucks for Paul Hackett for the Second Congressional district of Ohio. Want to see why Hackett deserves to be their Congressman, and why a contribution is important? Check it out. A great story in the compare and contrast department.

Does anyone have any information about what happened to South Knox Bubba. There is a cryptic web page that says "GAME OVER" and a closing tag signed "skb".

Anyone?

I wish you and Mrs. Bubba all the best, know that you will be missed. Bubba and if you want ever to rent the soapbox here for awhile, the price is right for you: free. All the best...

General William Westmorland joins the ranks of the newly deceased today. Of natural causes at age 91 in a retirement home. I'm betting that there are 58,000 soldiers whose names line the walls of the Vietnam Memorial who wish they could have shared that fate too. Westmorland:

During a trip to the United States in the spring of 1967, Westmoreland told journalists that he and his men were "dismayed by recent unpatriotic acts here at home." He said these acts "inevitably will cost lives" of U.S. troops and were handing the enemy successes that "he cannot match on the battlefield."

It seems that all the major media outlets are falling for the easy republican talking point that there is no problem for Rove, because Wilson (and his report were discredited) by many, many wise men. What does this talking point ignore? That Valerie Plame's cover as a CIA operative was compromised, and by doing so all the operations and operatives she had worked with and groomed to feed information back to CIA about actual Weapons of Mass Destruction (and or components, precursors, transactions and anything related) were terminally and completely fucked from then until forever. Who knows if people lost their lives, livihoods and of course confidence in being able to cooperate with CIA never knowing whether or not their contributions to our National Security will be sold down the river by a petulant partisan politician.

Nice job on the whole keeping our country safe morons. What's next, blue state flypaper?

The more the republi-fascist spin machine kicks up, the more it's worth the time to go back and remember that what they are trying to really protect is not Karl Rove, although Hairy Thunderer preserve us, they don't want to see Karl in Chains (hey, isn't that a rock band?). They want to blur the already shakey, and continually moving rationale for war that was Topic One for Preznit Deserting Fratboy after Chickenhawk One landed in DC on or about 9/12/2001.

So really, what was some of the genesis of this mess? Let's toss a little fuel in the wayback machine and pump up 1.21 gigawatts of power and see:

A row has broken out between France and Italy over whose intelligence service is to blame for the Niger uranium controversy, which led to Britain and America claiming wrongly that Saddam Hussein was trying to buy material for nuclear bombs.

Italian diplomats say that France was behind forged documents which at first appeared to prove that Iraq was seeking "yellow-cake" uranium in Niger - evidence used by Britain and America to promote the case for last year's Gulf war.
...
"Their aim was to make the allies look ridiculous in order to undermine their case for war."

According to an account given to The Sunday Telegraph, France was driven by "a cold desire to protect their privileged, dominant trading relationship with Saddam, which in the case of war would have been at risk".
...
The papers found their way to the CIA and to MI6, and in September 2002 Tony Blair accused Saddam of seeking "significant quantities" of uranium from an undisclosed African country - in fact, Niger. President George W Bush made a similar claim in his State of the Union address to Congress four months later, using information passed to him by MI6.

The International Atomic Energy Agency expressed doubts over the documents' authenticity, however, and in March 2003 declared them false.

The suggestion that Italy, driven by its government's support for America, had forged the documents to help to justify the war in Iraq, has caused a furore and has now led to the revelation of new information about "Giacomo".
...
American intelligence officials were further misled over Saddam's supposed attempt to buy uranium when France - which effectively controls mining in Niger - told Washington that it had reason to believe that Iraq was trying to do so. "Only later did Paris inform Washington that its belief had been based on the same documents that had tricked the Americans and the British," an Italian diplomat said.

"This was la grande trappola [the big trap]. The Americans were now convinced by the French that Saddam really was trying to buy uranium. They thought the French must be right, since not even a gram of uranium in Niger could be shifted without their knowledge."

RICE: You will get different estimates about precisely how close he is. We do know that he is actively pursuing a nuclear weapon. We do know that there have been shipments going into Iran, for instance -- into Iraq, for instance, of aluminum tubes that really are only suited to -- high-quality aluminum tools that are only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs.
...
The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't what the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.
...
It is incumbent on Saddam Hussein, who, after all, signed on to an obligation to disarm, to convince the world that he is not trying to. And every piece of experience with him, all of the available evidence is simply that he continues down this road.

We do not want to be surprised again. History shows that you are always surprised about how quickly someone acquires a terrible weapon. We were surprised that the Soviet program was as far along as it was. We thought it would be 1955, it was 1949. Saddam Hussein was almost six months from acquiring a crude nuclear device in 1991.

The problem is that we can't afford to be surprised. We know he has the infrastructure. We know he as the desire. We know his procurement network has been very, very active. How long are we going to wait to deal with what is clearly a gathering threat against the United States, against our allies and against his own region?

BLITZER: All right, Senator Graham, one, we do know that many in the Arab world, certainly as reflected by Amre Moussa, who is the secretary general of the Arab League, they say it would be a disaster if the U.S. were to preemptively strike against Iraq. Listen to what Amre Moussa had to say.

AMRE MOUSSA, SECRETARY GENERAL OF THE ARAB LEAGUE: We believe it that will open the gates of hell in the Middle East.

BLITZER: "We believe," he says, "it would open gates of hell in the Middle East," if the U.S. were to strike against Iraq. Do you believe that?

SHELBY: No, I don't share those concerns. I share some of the concerns of the world we're having to deal with, that is the Islamic world, and the problems there.

But I believe that we will be successful if we go in. I believe we're going to go in. And people like success, and they also know we're not wanting to stay there any longer than we have to.

CALLER: This is for both senators, what they think of John Ritter's complete turnaround about the Iraq matter?

BLITZER: I think he's referring, Senator Shelby, to Scott Ritter, the former U.N. weapons inspector who addressed the Iraqi National Assembly earlier today and warned of the dangers that would face the United States, indeed the world, of a preemptive U.S. strike. He says there is no serious threat to the United States coming from Iraq.

SHELBY: I saw his comments on television earlier this morning. I was troubled. I've met Scott Ritter, and I've had a lot of respect for him. I think he's an idealist, which is good, but I think he's way off base here.

Toward the end of show, Blitzer trots out a quote from VP Crashcart:

RICHARD CHENEY, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I don't think they know the same information. I think the fact is that, in terms of the quality of our intelligence operation, I think we're better than anybody else generally in this area.

Wes Clark at the end of the show...

In order to improve the communications, the administration has got to lay out clearly what is the problem. Is it the weapons of mass destruction? Is it because Saddam is an evil man? What is the specific problem? Has he uttered a threat against America? Or is it the threat to Israel? We've got to get the problem out on the table.

If the Washington Post Editorial Board were any more of a set of tools for the 1600 Crew...damn. From an editorial in the Post today, here's one of the featured distractor lies the GOP is pushing:

At the same time, Mr. Rove and other administration officials had a legitimate interest in rebutting Mr. Wilson's inflated claims -- including the notion that he had been dispatched to Niger at Mr. Cheney's behest. (my emphasis)

In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report. While I never saw the report, I was told that it referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake — a form of lightly processed ore — by Niger to Iraq in the late 1990's. The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president's office.

So we have to ask, is our reporters reading the definition of 'is'?

Apparently not.

Yeah. The old "Jody" call. The story of Jody and Dear John are as old as the military. Deployments were tough enough in peacetime. The number of my friends and squadronmates who got divorced over being gone kept me from getting married. Out of my last squadron (15 officers) only four are still married to the same women. Pretty sad. Now in Iraq, it's getting worse.

Most of the men in 4th Squad, Charlie Battery, fought two wars while they were in Iraq. There was the war against the insurgents that had them patrolling for roadside bombs and raiding houses at all hours. Then there was the war back home, which had them struggling, over phone lines from 7,000 miles away, to keep their marriages and their bank accounts intact.
...
They all knew about "Jody," the opportunist of Army lore who moved in on a soldier's girl while the soldier was off fighting a war. They had sung hundreds of cadences in basic training deriding the name. But it had always seemed like a joke, something that happened to other guys.
...
After surviving the chaos of Iraq, thousands of soldiers have become casualties of a fight they were poorly trained for: keeping control of their family lives during the separation of war. Men and women who feel lucky their units suffered few fatalities say they can name dozens who returned to empty houses, squandered bank accounts, divorce papers and restraining orders.

The Army divorce rate has jumped more than 80% since the fighting began overseas in response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The courts around Ft. Hood, the Army's largest post, may have to add another judge to handle the caseload. Divorce lawyers hire extra staff whenever a division prepares to come home.

The young men wanted to know that they were going to be coming home to a faithful, patient, loving wife, perhaps even a new child; the idea of a trimmed lawn and a white picket fence guarding their family as they guarded their perimeter from bad things, squarely in their thoughts as they boarded the transport to Baghdad. No sacrifice was too great to come home to that. But separation, anxiety and lonliness make for a powerful antidote to those dreams. Young wives forced to live in near poverty on a junior enlisted salary soon begin to wonder what it's all about; far from home and their family that separation begins to cause changes metastisize into a cancer that has no cure save their excision from the marriage.

Another thing that was interesting about the article, two of the enlisted men named were reduced in rank for buying and consuming black-market alcohol. How sad is that? Are they not allowed to drink? Is there no EM club they can go to blow off steam? I see the makings of another epidemic of "zero tolerance" substance abuse bullshit coming, and an entire generation of servicemen left high and dry, so to speak because it's cheaper to kick them out than treat them for the legitimate psychological stress that drove them to become involved with substance abuse to begin with. General Discharges and Other-than-Honorable discharges get little to no VA support, and are harder to get "upgraded" by the Board for Correction of Military Records. Maybe that's the 1600 Crew plan to defund the VA...

crossposted to Operation Yellow Elephant

It's looking more and more like the republican are trying to out-do the definition of "is". Apparently, the latest spin is that now Rove heard of Valerie Plame from Novakula. Then he went off to confirm that veracity of the Novaks' claim and subsequently trashed Wilson and his wife.

Karl Rove, the White House senior adviser, spoke with the columnist Robert D. Novak as he was preparing an article in July 2003 that identified a C.I.A. officer who was undercover, someone who has been officially briefed on the matter said.
Mr. Rove has told investigators that he learned from the columnist the name of the C.I.A. officer, who was referred to by her maiden name, Valerie Plame, and the circumstances in which her husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, traveled to Africa to investigate possible uranium sales to Iraq, the person said.

After hearing Mr. Novak's account, the person who has been briefed on the matter said, Mr. Rove told the columnist: "I heard that, too."

The previously undisclosed telephone conversation, which took place on July 8, 2003, was initiated by Mr. Novak, the person who has been briefed on the matter said.

My friends I think we have an entry in the double-headed Chickenhawk awards. Our friend, Nathan Taylor, he can't enlist because of not just one, but two life-threatening medical problems. Remember, he told the Las Vegas Sun at one time that:

"I was put through hell," he said. "It hurt me, it hurt my family. I had broken my back and lost everything to put on this convention." (emphasis added)

Taylor said he wanted to enlist but couldn't because of two recent lung surgeries.

It would be interesting, but not particularly surprising to find that the actual source of Rove's knowledge of Valerie Plame as a covert operative might have actually come from Preznit Bunnypants himself. Why? Well, back during Bush I, Junior was an employee at the Crime Family Enterprises Mid-Atlantic HQ at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Joe Wilson was considered by Bush Pere to be somewhat of a hero for his act of standing up to Saddam Hussein.

Bush Pere, of course would have known all about Joe Wilson's wife both by virtue of being Prez and possibly because having been DCI, he still had connections in the building who might have filled him in on the details of the Wilson Family, since Bush I has always been respectful of the mission and duties of CIA.

It's entirely possible that he shared all that with Junior as an "employee" between 1988-1992 when he was explaining how the whole Wilson Family were real American Heros to his misbegotten spawn.

Junior remembers all that when Joe Wilson pops up with something as inconvenient as the truth in the form of factual evidence and publishes it in the NY Times just as he's about to embark on the Codpiece Follies. Beloved Leader calls Rove into the Oval Office, and the conversation goes like this:

[Beloved Leader]Hey, Turd Blossom, step in here a moment, will ya?

[Rove]Ok Boss, on my way

[BL] Say you know that Wilson guy? Well how about tellin' the next pet reporter you talk to that he's as full of shit as a Christmas Goose. We can't have him tellin' the truth about invadin' Iraq. We got oil to steal, and money ta make.

Now, I know for a fact that Joe Wilson's wife does sumpin' secret over at CIA. Let's see if we can use that to shut him up or at least make him look unpatriotic or sumpin'. Get that out to Novak somehow. He's a shifty old bastard who won't talk, and if you can't get it to Novak, use Russert, he's reliable as hell.

[Rove] Be right on it boss. Be right on it.

[BL] Yer a good boy Turd Blossom. Ya make me proud!

Ah, young Nathan Taylor. Remember him? The Chairman of the Young Republican National Convention in Las Vegas? You know the one who said such inspiring things as:

Nathan Taylor further commented "It is no wonder why so-called political leaders who cater to these malcontents no longer control the Presidency, the Congress, most governorships nor state legislatures. They clearly stand for nothing but thwarting those brave men and women who desire only to protect us from our proven enemies."

Nevada's chapter of the Young Republicans has basically imploded, leaving its chairman with up to $25,000 in personal debt and allegations that he mishandled money.

All but three people have resigned from the statewide group, but the fallout could prove increasingly embarrassing to the entire state Republican Party.

Today, the chairman of the group, Reno resident Nathan Taylor, plans to hold a press conference attacking three of the state's party leaders -- Sen. John Ensign, Rep. Jim Gibbons and Rep. Jon Porter.

"I've got bills at the hotel I can't pay," said Taylor, a 29-year-old political science senior at UNR who said he had to quit his food service job and drop classes to plan the convention.

Taylor estimates that the convention, attended by about 600 people from around the nation, is at least $10,000 -- and up to $25,000 -- in the red.

As the chairman, he said he'll personally have to cough up the cash.

"It's a really sad day when my congressmen and my senator, who are sitting on millions, can't cut me a check for $25,000," Taylor said. "I don't think I'm asking for much."

But within days after dropping the charges against Taylor, all but three members of the state Young Republican group resigned, saying they were convinced the convention would turn up short of money.

Robyn Pladson, chairwoman of the North Dakota Young Republicans and a member of the national group appointed to oversee convention finances, said Taylor refused to give information that the oversight group requested.

Taylor said the charges against him are all politically motivated, and he is holding the press conference today because he wants to get his life back in shape.

"I was put through hell," he said. "It hurt me, it hurt my family. I had broken my back and lost everything to put on this convention."

You Go, Nathan!

Ahhhh...

Oh, allow an old sailor his fantasies!

Gee, I didn't know that the Catholic Church didn't like Harry Potter. I thought that they got over their whole obsession with witchcraft a few centuries ago, and were leaving that up to their new bestest-friends, the christo-fascist Amurkans. Apparently Ratzi the Nazi is just not down with Harry.

In a letter dated March 7, 2003 Cardinal Ratzinger thanked Kuby for her "instructive" book Harry Potter - gut oder böse (Harry Potter- good or evil?), in which Kuby says the Potter books corrupt the hearts of the young, preventing them from developing a properly ordered sense of good and evil, thus harming their relationship with God while that relationship is still in its infancy.

"It is good, that you enlighten people about Harry Potter, because those are subtle seductions, which act unnoticed and by this deeply distort Christianity in the soul, before it can grow properly," wrote Cardinal Ratzinger.

I'm sure that Pope Ratzi the Nazi thinks that there was no evil at all in the parishes of John Geoghan and other priests down through the centuries. Perhaps if those youngsters who were molested by the good-and-pure men of the cloth had been been home reading what passed for novels as popular as Harry Potter in their day, they might not have been exposed to Real, Palpable Evil instead of what an insane old Nazi sees as "Evil" in a new Millenium where more and more people are seeing him as irrelevant.

Pope Ratzi reminds me of Cardinal Glick in "Dogma", the kind of asshole who would bless his golf clubs because he thought it would give a better game.

Interesting SUSA poll of the nation's governators. Ohio, home of the infamous, ongoing "Coin of the Realm" scandal (I refuse to use the word coin-gate), has Bob Taft whose progenitor was a big Bush supporter back in the days when Grampaw Bush was makin' up stories about fake medals won in battle. The poll shows Taft with a 17% approval rating and a 76% disapproval rating. The highest disapproval numbers of any governator in the country, even Ahnuld.

With numbers like that even Ohio Democratic Party chair Denny White ought to be able to get off his ass and do something to kick-start activism in the state. If he can't or won't, perhaps it's time for Denny to start looking for a real job. It's not often that Ohio Dems are going to get handed an opening like this, and they should be in the papers and into Netroots daily "working the crowds".

The corrupt republicans have managed to ruin the economy, education system, and electoral system in the state. It's time to take them down and send them back to the farm.

Denny: Ohio should be "in play" like at no time in it's past. Are you there?

I was poking around looking for some stuff on Orrin Hatch, and Google, wonderful Google dropped me into this article. Take a couple of minutes and read it. You won't want to be sipping on that diet drink though.

Also at the center of the effort to land FDA approval of NutraSweet stood Donald Rumsfeld - "Rummy" to his friends - chairman of G.D. Searle upon leaving the Ford administration in 1977. Rumsfeld, the product of a wealthy Chicago suburb, was a Princeton graduate and a Navy pilot during the Korean conflict. He entered politics as a Congressional House aide attending night classes at Georgetown University Law School, which is closely aligned with the CIA.43

Rumsfeld campaigned ambitiously for Richard Nixon, who drafted him to direct the Office of Equal Opportunity on May 26,1969. He quickly established an office to spy on his employees in a holy crusade to flush out "revolutionaries" said to be granting federal funds to politically subversive organizations-a throwback to McCarthy's tantrums.44 Rumsfeld also figured in Nixon's notorious Power Control Group, spearheaded by Charles Colson and John Ehrlichman.

A Tom Delay associate has lost a bid to make an indictment go away in Texas.

A Texas state judge yesterday reaffirmed the indictment of a political associate of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), turning aside his claim that a state law barring the use of corporate funds in the 2002 Texas election was unconstitutionally vague.
...
n September 2004, a grand jury indicted John Colyandro, who directed the Texas group, on charges of illegally collecting the money. Colyandro, a veteran of White House political adviser Karl Rove's direct-mail firm, had sought to have the indictment dismissed on grounds that the law was poorly drafted and infringed on protected rights.

District Judge Robert Perkins, ruling in Austin, denied the motion, clearing an obstacle to Colyandro's eventual trial after appeals are heard. In remarks from the bench, he indicated he plans to dismiss next month a similar motion by Jim Ellis, the Texas group's chief fundraiser, who was indicted for money-laundering in the case.
...
DeLay, who has not been charged with wrongdoing in the case, served on the board of the Texas group, and called or met with some of its corporate donors. He also wrote a cover letter for its fundraising brochure. Ellis still runs DeLay's federal political action committee, Americans for a Republican Majority, which served as a model for the Texas group.emphasis added

Oh boy, here's a preview of coming attractions as US troops turn over the Iraqi Government to the 1600 Crew's pet Iraqi Sock Puppets:

Iraq's widely feared police commandos were struggling on Tuesday to explain how at least 10 Sunni Arab men and youths, one only 17, suffocated after a commando unit seized them from a hospital emergency ward and locked them in a police van in summer temperatures exceeding 110 degrees.
...
For the commandos, many of them veterans of Saddam Hussein's army, police and intelligence units, the incident was the latest in a long series of incidents in which they have been accused of using brutal techniques learned during Mr. Hussein's years of terror. Doctors who witnessed the victims being dragged from the hospital ward identified the government men as members of the notorious First Brigade of the commandos, but General Flaieh said that the unit involved was a separate police paramilitary force known as the Special Security Force.
...
An officer in a police unit attached to Yarmouk Hospital who requested anonymity because he feared reprisal said that an officer with the police commandos' First Brigade, Col. Muhammad Hmood, arrived at the hospital late on Sunday night, about 14 hours after the arrests at Noor Hospital. The officer said Colonel Hmood led attendants to four closed Chevrolet pick-ups carrying eight bodies and four men who were unconscious, two of whom subsequently died. "The colonel said the men were terrorists who had attacked an American convoy, and that they had accidentally suffocated," the police officer said.

The officer said that one of the men who arrived at Yarmouk hospital unconscious but later recovered was Mr. Saleh, the survivor quoted by the Muslim Clerics' Association. "Diya Saleh told us, 'The Interior Ministry commandos who arrested us at Noor Hospital put us in a van, and then took us out and tortured us,' " the officer said. "We called for doctors to look after the men still breathing, and then a pathologist came and looked at the bodies. He said that they had been tortured, with injuries caused by electric shocks."
...
The police officer added, "What happened to those men from Abu Ghraib was a crime against the Iraqi people. When their relatives arrived to claim the bodies, I heard them saying many bad things about the police. With crimes like this, it's not hard to see why the insurgents keep on attacking the police. Those in authority should do something to stop it."

All we have done is sow the seeds for one of the longest civil wars in the middle east, whose violence will be exported around the world thanks to the megalomania of Beloved Leader and the Neo-Cons. I wonder if Mommy and Poppy Bush are impressed with Junior yet? He's certainly managed to fail upward impressively, igniting a potential global conflict as he's enriched himself, his friends and his family. Cheney really does make him impeachment-proof, doesn't he?

Another new blog that you ought to go check out. Especially this.

And what, what Rove said at the NY republican dinner about democrats wasn't a partisan political attack?

Seriously worth a read.

Der Duchess then, talking about Clinton:

Clinton is a cancer on the culture, a cancer of cynicism, narcissism and deceit. At some point, not even the most stellar of economic records, not even the most prosperous of decades, is worth the price of such a cancer metastasising even further. It is time to be rid of it. For good and all. Sooner rather than later.

Der Duchess now, concerning Bush and Rove:

I'm leery of saying anything yet about a case that is still so murky.
...
I don't know enough to say anything that definitive right now. But it seems clear to me that Rove leaked the CIA role of Wilson's wife (whether he named her or knew that she was under-cover is another matter). The president has said he would fire anyone who did such a thing. Ergo: the president must fire Rove or break his word.

This is pretty damn funny.

A US Supreme Court Judge could lose his country farmhouse thanks to a controversial law which he himself voted to bring in.

Furious protesters are plotting to seize David Souter's $150,000 (£86,400) 19th century home and turn it into a hotel after he voted to give towns the legal right to make compulsory purchases. They view his support for the legislation as an affront to every American's inviolable right to personal property.

In retaliation, they are determined to make him pay with the loss of his home in the countryside outside the town of Weare in New Hampshire, where the official state motto is "Live Free or Die". The hotel would be called The Lost Freedom, and its restaurant, The Just Desserts.
...
"By his own ruling, Weare the town has the justification for such an action because the hotel project we are submitting will benefit the town by creating new jobs and a higher tax revenue," he said.

According to town officials, the audacious bid has a chance of success. "As far as we are concerned, we need to take this seriously under these new rules and are setting up meetings," said Charles Meany, Weare's official in charge of planning.
...
Mr Souter, who has had his house in Weare for years and is expected to spend the summer there, might be surprised by the reaction of old acquaintances in the village.

If every town that has a Supreme Court Justice living there were to annex their property, do you think they'd rethink Kelo? Ooops! Judicial Mulligan!

The loyalty of Preznit Criminally Culpable to even his most morally-challenged aides and friends has never been questioned. The further someone is likely to take the fall for the Bush Crime Family, the more they are seen as 'good and loyal soldiers'. So I doubt that Preznit Intellectually Impaired will fire Karl without some cataclysmic event occuring. All that being said, how about if his security clearance were just pulled? I don't know who maintains them for the 1600 Crew civilian personnel, but couldn't Karls clearance just be pulled or at least downgraded to "confidential-noforn' or something? That would limit his usefulness and access to a good bit of the WH, without actually "firing" him. Yet.

Just askin'.

L'il Scotty is getting himself in deeper and deeper everytime he opens his mouth. I'll bet he wishes he used the words "ongoing investigation" about two years ago, when he tried to smirk his way through denying Karl Rove's complicity in the Plame affair. Here's a sampling of his latest press debacle. I wonder if they'll start commenting on whether or not he's coloring his hair next.

The Associated Press's Terry Hunt led off. "Does the president stand by his pledge to fire anyone involved in the leak of a name of a CIA operative?"

McClellan, wearing a gray suit and heavy makeup, delivered the first of many demurrals. "While that investigation is ongoing, the White House is not going to comment," he said.

Hunt, expecting this, pressed: "I wasn't actually talking about any investigation."

"Yes," McClellan allowed, "but this question is coming up in the context of this ongoing investigation."
...
McClellan tried for relief from Fox News, but Carl Cameron hit him with a tough one. "Does the president continue to have confidence in Mr. Rove?"

McClellan wouldn't say, so a mischievous April Ryan of American Urban Radio Networks tried to get McClellan to say something -- anything -- about Rove. "Who is Karl Rove as it relates to this administration?" she asked.

"I think I've responded," McClellan answered.

The press secretary seemed grateful when questions turned to other subjects, such as the Supreme Court, the attacks in London or a withdrawal from Iraq. At other times, he seemed to plead for understanding from his questioners, saying they "know the type of person that I am."

McClellan is indeed well liked by the press corps. But that counts for little now, when recent events have shown that he either misled reporters deliberately or was duped by his White House colleagues. Ken Herman, the voluble Cox News White House reporter, even invoked Watergate days, asking if McClellan's previous statements are "all inoperative."

The National Guard, the backbone of the current forces deployed overseas has missed its' recruiting goals for something like the 18th consecutive month...

The Army National Guard, a cornerstone of the U.S. force in Iraq, missed its recruiting goal for at least the ninth straight month in June and is nearly 19,000 soldiers below its authorized strength, military officials said Monday.

The Army Guard was seeking 5,032 new soldiers in June but signed up only 4,337, a 14 percent shortfall, according to statistics released Monday by the Pentagon. It is more than 10,000 soldiers behind its year-to-date goal of almost 45,000 recruits, and has missed its recruiting target during at least 17 of the last 18 months.

Hey, in between columns and blog posts calling all 'liberals' fifth-columnists for al-Qaeda, and soldiers his servants, Andrew Sullivan invented blogging!

In 2000, the word 'blog' barely existed in common discourse; and I had to beg TV producers to cite it under my name. ... In the early days, I played a part in pioneering some blog tropes: media micro-criticism, instant news judgment, phony awards, political mini-campaigns (against Lott, Raines or torture), money quotes, etc. These are now staples of the genre.

Broke down and watched a few millionaire pundits. Embroynic common thread/talking point: Joe Wilson lied to the Senate Intelligence Committee, that's what Karl was trying to warn Cooper about. It's all Joe Wilsons' fault he married a blond-headed CIA bimbo who sent him on a boondoggle.

Let's see how this talking point plays out over the next couple days. Rightards trying it out: some troll from the NY Post, and Monica Crowley (?) from MSGOP, who had bow-tie boy believing it. Sorry I don't know their names, I just don't watch enough news on TV.

Ron Ziegler (Nixon) "Not Operative"
Scotty McClellan (You Know Who) "Ongoing Investigation"

Bwahahahahaha

And these guys are lawyers?

... But absent a serious claim of a statutory violation or perjury, it's questionable whether anyone apart from liberal bloggers and other pre-existing Bush haters will partake in the media's dog food. This isn't a top presidential aide accepting an expensive gift, or engaging in lewd sexual conduct. It's a top aide providing truthful information to journalists in response to lies told to embarrass the administration and our government." (via Froomkin @ Wapo)

It's looking like Rove is pretty much the guy in the Plame investigation who tagged Valerie Plame as a covert CIA operative to score political points against Joe Wilson for not writing a document more supportive of the Impending Invasion of Mesopotamia in accordance with the Bunnypants Chickenhawk Document of Pre-emption.

Because I still ascribe to that quaint idea of "innocent until proven guilty", I'd like to see Rove (1) have his security clearance pulled by the end of business today; that's an easy one. (2) be placed on unpaid administrative leave from his job at the White House.

If the 1600 Crew is at all serious about the appearance of impropriety (which we all know that they're not), they should do these two things without delay (pun intended)...As long as the allegation of mishandling classified information exists Rove should be denied all access to it, including papers, briefings and meetings.

Or Rove should just resign now, become a private citizen and face the music.

When Scott McClellan (R-Professional Liar) says:

No one wants to get to the bottom of it more than the president of the United States.

First thing I see on Atrios today from the New York Post:

THE Young Republicans have given cocky "Apprentice" punk Kelly Perdew the boot. ... convention chairman Nathan Taylor got fed up with Perdew's irksome antics and unceremoniously disinvited the former Marine at the last moment. A fired-up Taylor tells PAGE SIX's Fernando Gil: "Who does this guy think he is? Just because he works for Donald Trump doesn't give him the right to demand first-class airfare, limousine rides, and act like a total prima donna. He's been a total nightmare for me!"

I wonder how many other "difficult" veterans were "disinvited"? Still waiting for some word on the "Freedom Fighters Panel" from the Chickenhawk Convention. Anyone?

Depends, I guess on your point of view. I'm sure that the families of Guard and Reservists are pretty happy. The states where they are needed most are pretty happy and at the Pentagon, well they're wondering.

The number of Reserve and National Guard troops on domestic and overseas missions has fallen to about 138,000, down from a peak of nearly 220,000 after the invasion of Iraq two years ago, a sharp decline that military officials say will continue in the months ahead.

The decrease comes as welcome relief to tens of thousands of formerly part-time soldiers who, with their families, employers and communities, have been badly stressed by their long call-ups for duty in Afghanistan and Iraq.
...
But as these returning troops settle back into their civilian lives, the Army is running perilously low on its Reserve and National Guard soldiers who largely fill certain critical support jobs, like military police and civil affairs officers and truck drivers. Marine Corps reservists are facing similar constraints.

A main reason for the shortages is that more and more of these troops who have been involuntarily mobilized are nearing their 24-month maximum call-up limit set by the Bush administration, military personnel specialists say.
...
Pentagon officials say that they expect they will continue to rely on tens of thousands of mobilized National Guard and Reserve troops for a broad range of missions in this country and overseas. Lt. Gen. James J. Lovelace, the Army's chief of operations, dismissed concerns that the Guard or Reserve were "broken," saying, "we still have rich reservoir to draw on to fill those units."

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has complained that the military has activated only about 44 percent of the nation's 1.1 million National Guard and Reserve soldiers since Sept. 11, but still faces shortages in specialties found mainly in the Reserve and National Guard.
...
A second hurdle involves the Pentagon's 24-month call-up policy and its goal of deploying National Guard and Reserve soldiers only one year out of every six. While current law allows for repeated call-ups of as long as 24 consecutive months, the Pentagon decided several months ago not to use such authority, fearing that to do so would only add more strain to the citizen-soldier ranks.

And is General Lovelace living in DickCheney World's "Last Throes" Midway with the laughing clowns and dancing Yellow Elephants?

Does anyone else feel a
Draft
in here?

As I said before this is whole Karl Rove thing is going to come down to timelines. And now it looks like parsing of words, damn the republicans excel at that!

Looking at this from the post, Rove's lawyer (and the Post) try to make Rove look like a Vestal Virgin:

"Rove did not mention her name to Cooper," Luskin said. "This was not an effort to encourage Time to disclose her identity. What he was doing was discouraging Time from perpetuating some statements that had been made publicly and weren't true."

"Rove gave Cooper a "big warning" that Wilson's assertions might not be entirely accurate and that it was not the director of the CIA or the vice president who sent Wilson on his trip. Rove apparently told Cooper that it was "Wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on [weapons of mass destruction] issues who authorized the trip,"emphasis added

Wow.

How 2006 Elections:

The United States and Britain are drawing up plans to withdraw the majority of their troops from Iraq by the middle of next year, according to a secret memo written for British Prime Minister Tony Blair by Defense Secretary John Reid.

The paper, which is marked "Secret -- UK Eyes Only," said "emerging U.S. plans assume that 14 out of 18 provinces could be handed over to Iraqi control by early 2006," allowing a reduction in overall U.S.-led forces in Iraq to 66,000 troops. The troop level is now about 160,000, including 138,000 American troops, according to a military spokesperson in Baghdad.

John Kerry's question becomes even more relevent after the Clusterfuck in Mesopotamia is wound down by the fuckwits in charge, "How do you ask a man to be the last one to die for his country?".

The Mayberry Machiavelli's: burning the midnight oil again for the good of the Kriegpartei.

So, the son of PNAC War-Warbler Elliot Cohen is going to be shipping off to Iraq soon as an Army Ranger. That's one down and how many to go? Cohen has a piece in the Post expressing his disgust with the way the war is being waged, but he can't quite bring himself to bite the hand that feeds him and be seen to enjoy it.

If we fail in Iraq -- and I don't think we will -- it won't be because the American people lack heart, but because leaders and institutions have failed. Rather than fretting about support at home, let them show themselves dedicated to waging and winning a strange kind of war and describing it as it is, candidly and in detail. Then the American people will give them all the support they need.

I wonder what Cohens tune will be if his son were to come home via Dover AFB in a midnight transfer-tube arrival, or via Walter Reed with no eyes and legs and a medical retirement. How much will the lies of the 1600 Crew be worth then? All his grand geopolitical posturing as an "expert" will seem kind of silly, I think.

Best of luck, Lt. Cohen. Come home safe and have a good life when you come back to the world...

Funny how things change when it's one of your own that will be doing the fighting.
Posted by: shinypenny at July 11, 2005 05:05 AM

Another story to make your blood boil, about yet another aspect of the way that the 1600 Crew is directing the Army to toss out injured soldiers when they return to the US.

The day before his 22nd birthday, a bomb hanging from a tree along a road near Fallujah exploded above Rory Dunn’s Humvee.

Dunn’s forehead was crushed from ear to ear, leaving his brain exposed. His right eye was destroyed by shrapnel; the left eye nearly so. His hearing was severely damaged.
...
Yet, even as Dunn fought to overcome his traumatic brain injury and other wounds, his mother, Cynthia Lefever, fought the Army to ensure her son continued to receive critical care from Army specialists. Lefever said the Army tried to pressure her son into accepting a discharge before he was ready – pressure other severely wounded soldiers say they’ve experienced, too.

Probably more than any of us want to know about.

So, why not start a campaign that makes the government spend $1 on VA treatment and hospitals for every $1 spent with government contractors. Seems only fair to me.

Thanx to: One Pissed Off Vet

OK. Once again The Duchess is back to his crypto-rascist spew talking about Islamic folk at British Universities, who may or may not be sympathetic to Al-Qaeda (hey! they've all got Brown Skin and Smell Funny!):

The Brits have been too tolerant of these fascists operating in plain sight.

The Bushes have been too tolerant of these faggots operating in plain sight.

Once again, here I am listening to toones on a nice Sunday PM and reading the blogs o'the world. Another old fart (that's me) 10 from the Pod:

Graceland - Paul Simon
All You Need is Love - Beatles
San Francisco Nights - Eric Burden and the Animals
Champagne Supernova - Oasis
Underneath it All - No Doubt
Accidents Will Happen - Elvis Costello
Jesus of Suburbia - Green Day
Tenth Avenue Freeze-out - Springsteen
Dance the Night Away - Van Halen
Don't Stop Me Now - Queen

Yeah, like I said before, I like my classic rock. So shoot me :)

From the Newsweek "Periscope"
J. Miller [Big Up Arrow Graphic]
Old: Superaggressive NYT reporter duped by WMD curveballs.
New: Joan of Arc of the First Amendment.

"Duped by WMD Curveballs"? She practically made the shit up on the spot for Ahmed and the Neo-cons on demand. The only "duping" going on around here is Newsweek trying to pretend that St. Judy of the Gutters is some kind of hero. Joan of Arc of the First Amendment? When's the bonfire?

[retch]

Roger Ailes (the good one) has a link up today to another story of the 1600 Crew wiping their collective asses with the Constitution. It's a Real Player file, that's from an NPR show. The segment that Roger highlights is in the first three or four minutes, and it's interesting.

The host, Ira Glass takes a look at the current role of religion in America (is there a bigger bunch of whining cry-babies than the "victimized" christo-fascists? I think not.). He finishes the program with a monologue by Julia Sweeney, formerly of Saturday Night Live, which is one of the best things I have listened to in a long, long time.

It's worth the time to listen to the whole thing, but if you want to go to the Sweeney monologue, it's at about 39':37" and lasts about 20 minutes. It's awesome.

Ah, Sultry Summer Sunday afternoons. Got a fix of one of my most favorite occasional treats, a PB&J with cruchy peanut butter and strawberry jam on oatmeal bread and glass of ice-cold milk.

What's your Guilty Pleasure on days like this?

Click here, meet a friend. No Spam involved. Thank you.

You have to read this.

If there is no other crime committed by the 1600 Crew against our returning Vets that's as heinous as this one, I'd be shocked.

The 1600 Crew Creedo: Support Our Troops Tax Cuts for Paris Hilton!

No, it's not me.

Eric Massa, a career Naval Officer is running for Congress in the 29th District in New York in 2006. It's never too early to get into the race.

Check out his site. Even if he's not your Future Congressman, it's nice to know that folks are getting into the game now to get some name recognition for next year.

Apparently the Judy Miller fiasco is leaving the media a bit scared of it's own shadow. The Cleveland Plain-Dealer has two stories, presumably having to do with the Coin of the Realm scandal in Ohio (it's the hottest story of political chicanery going in the Buckeye State right now). The CPD won't publish it because:

The editor of The Cleveland Plain Dealer said last night that the newspaper, acting on the advice of its lawyers, was withholding publication of two major investigative articles because they were based on illegally leaked documents and could lead to penalties against the paper and the jailing of reporters.
...
In an earlier interview with the trade journal Editor & Publisher, which published an article on its Web site late yesterday, Mr. Clifton said that lawyers for The Plain Dealer and its owner, Newhouse Newspapers, had strongly recommended against publication of the articles.

"They've said, This is a super, super high-risk endeavor and you would, you know, you'd lose," Mr. Clifton told Editor & Publisher. "The reporters say, 'Well, we're willing to go to jail,' and I'm willing to go to jail if it gets laid on me, but the newspaper isn't willing to go to jail."
...
"These are documents that someone had and should not have released to anyone else," he said. If an investigation were pursued, the newspaper, its reporters and their sources could all face court penalties for unauthorized disclosures.

Mr. Clifton declined to provide details about the two investigative articles being withheld, but he characterized them as "profoundly important," adding, "They would have been of significant interest to the public." Asked if they might be published at some later date, he said, "Not in the short term."
...
"As I write this, two stories of profound importance languish in our hands," Mr. Clifton wrote. "The public would be well-served to know them, but both are based on documents leaked to us by people who would face deep trouble for having leaked them. Publishing the stories would almost certainly lead to a leak investigation and the ultimate choice: talk or go to jail. Because talking isn't an option and jail is too high a price to pay, these two stories will go untold for now. How many more are out there?"

Mr. Clifton said he was surprised that there had been so little public reaction to his disclosure of "something that newspapers typically don't reveal - that real live news had been stifled."

"I hoped the public would be bothered by that," he said.

And that is all the more reason for Republicans to fret over next year's statewide elections. The three Republican candidates for governor — Blackwell, State Auditor Betty Montgomery and Attorney General Jim Petro — had received more than $17,000 in contributions from Noe. They said they will either return the contributions or place the money into escrow accounts until it can be returned to the Bureau of Workers' Compensation.

For all they know, not a damn thing may happen to their source as all those who could take vengence are lined up in the dock to plead "not guilty" one after the other.

Alternately, fly to Paris, log on to blogger in Europe, create an account anonymously and blog it. Big brouhaha, it's all in the open and voila, it's now public domain information. Or am I missing something here since IANAL?

If the dissonance that arises from the pea-brained C-F's over using embryos bound for destruction for harvesting stem cells were any greater my head would explode, something ultimately satisfying to the fundies but would make my dogs unhappy, they'd miss dinner tonight.

Promising but still unproven new approaches to creating human embryonic stem cells have suddenly jeopardized what once appeared to be certain Senate passage of a bill to loosen President Bush's four-year-old restrictions on human embryo research.
...
In May, the House easily passed bipartisan legislation allowing federally funded scientists to study stem cells derived from some of the thousands of human embryos destined for disposal at fertility clinics -- a significant expansion of the Bush policy. Until this week, Sens. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) expressed confidence that they had more than enough votes to pass the same bill in the Senate, despite threats of a presidential veto.
...
Jessica Echard, executive director of the Eagle Forum, the public policy organization founded by Phyllis Schlafly, said her group opposes "middle ground" legislation that pursues alternative methods for producing embryonic stem cells.

"Most scientists will say it's never enough," she said. "We will be giving ground to more and more unethical research."

From a story in the Post about business trying to influence the 1600 Crew on the replacement of O'Connor.

...Richard D. Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, ...

You would have thought that Billy Graham's daughter would have at least have had the decency to wait until his Last Crusade had hit the Video stores before getting the family name back in the news...

The daughter of the world's most influential evangelist was arrested a week ago in the parking lot of a discount store, accused of domestic battery against her husband.

Virginia Graham Foreman, 59 -- Billy Graham's daughter -- spent a night in jail after New Smyrna Beach police said she physically abused her husband, Chad, on July 1 in the parking lot of the Kmart on State Road 44. She was released on her own recognizance the following day.

Witness David Hill of Edgewater told police that night that he and his wife, Mary, saw Virginia Foreman choke and push her husband. Then, after he walked away and hid behind a furniture truck, she followed in their gold Ford Mustang.
...
Volusia County Judge Mary Jane Henderson, who presided over Foreman's first appearance hearing, said Chad Foreman told police that witnesses had "just misunderstood what was going on between them."

"He really tried to get the officer not to make an arrest," Henderson said.

Who knows how long this has been going on. I'm sure daddy Billy and the rest of the family will pray ta Jeebus about it, have a fund-raiser and eventually it's going to happen again. And perhaps there won't be any witnesses to similar or worse abuse. Again.

What would Focus on the Fetus' Dr. Dobson say?

Yup, the 1600 Crew is cursed with an overabundance of excellent diplomats. Yessiree Bob.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday that she intended to rebuff a South Korean request to enhance an offer that five nations made to North Korea in exchange for dismantling its nuclear weapons program.

The South Korean government has urged Washington to add a rich package of incentives to a proposal given to North Korea a year ago, during the last session of six-nation nuclear disarmament negotiations. Chung Dong Young, South Korea's unification minister, presented new offers to Kim Jong Il, North Korea's leader, during a meeting last month in the North Korean capital.

After a visit to Washington last week, Mr. Chung seemed to believe the administration had agreed to his government's plan to combine the two proposals. "Both sides agreed that the next six-party talks, when they reopen, will gain momentum if they combine the proposals from the previous talks and South Korea's important proposal," he told Korean reporters.

But speaking Friday on her plane en route to China, her first stop on an Asian tour, Ms. Rice said: "We are not talking about enhancement of the current proposal. I will listen to what people think. But I think it is important to get a response to the proposal already made."

I can't imagine that you know, the South Koreans might have a clue about how to deal with their kinsmen to the north. Not a one. Of course, we all know what extraordinary geniuses the 1600 Crew are at Foreign Policy in general. We got the info from John Bolton.

Duke Cunningham, a passing acquaintance from the Ready Room Bar at the Cubi 'O' Club when he was flying F-4s off the Coral Sea, has gotten himself into a weeeee bit o'trouble. Cunningham, a man with an ego to common sense ratio of about 100:1 is being 'questioned' about some interesting dealings between himself and a defense contractor who got contracts worth $163 million dollars, in return seemingly for a little help with some real estate dealings.

Cunningham was a decorated pilot in Vietnam who has oft campaigned on the claim that he is the original model for Top Gun. In 2003, he sold his house in Del Mar, a very upscale town north of San Diego. The buyer was Mitchell Wade, a defense contractor, who paid $1.675 million. Wade later resold the house at a $700,000 loss.

Now, either this makes Wade the only person in recent history to lose money on a San Diego real estate deal, or the guy paid way too much for the house.

The deal is now under investigation by a grand jury. Cunningham in turn used the money he made from the Del Mar deal to buy a $2.55 million home in Rancho Santa Fe.

Meanwhile, back in Washington, Cunningham is living, rent-free, aboard a 42-foot yacht named the Duke Stir, which belongs to the said same Mitchell Wade. Since 2002, Wade's company, MZM Inc., has received $163 million in defense contracts.

Silverstein details the ballooning of the practice called ''earmarks'' in the federal budget. As it is true of much of what is wrong with our politics, the practice is not new - pork barrel politics has a venerable history - but it is spiraling out of control. The same thing has happened with gerrymandering, also an ancient practice, and campaign contributions. They've always been part of politics, it's just that now they are so much more so. Indeed, what have been just deplorable flaws in our system are now eating the whole system - the flaws are getting bigger than the functioning, with the result that serving the public interest is rapidly disappearing.

Silverstein reports on earmarks: ''In the past two decades, the pastime has become breathtaking in its profligacy. Even as the federal deficit soars to record heights, the sums of money being diverted from the treasury have grown ever larger. Last year, 15,584 separate earmarks worth a combined $32.7 billion were attached to the appropriations bills - more than twice the dollar amount in 2001 . . . and more than three times the dollar amount in 1998, when roughly 2,000 earmarks totaled $10.6 billion. The process is so willfully murky that abuse has become not the exception, but the rule.

"Earmarks are added anonymously, frequently during last-minute, closed-door sessions of the appropriations committees. An especially attractive feature for those private interests seeking earmarks is that they are awarded on a noncompetitive basis and recipients need not meet any performance standards."

Folks, we are being eaten alive by corruption.

Howard Dean, Are You Listening?

Also selected (in a tie) for "No Rocket Scientist" by Washingtonian Magazine in 2004.

I like the Philippines. I spent a lot of time in and out of Subic/Cubi Pt and Clark when I was a younger fool. By a complete act of luck, I was TAD at Clark the day that Marcos and his thieving family was tossed out of the PI and left from Clark after literally stealing everything they could carry from the Base Exchage to their jet. We were "locked in" at the BOQ for the day, and could not go anywhere until about 1800 or so. So I got to witness a part of the birth of Democracy in the Philippines. It's apparently still alive and well with a little occasional life support...

The political crisis facing President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo took a major turn on Friday when influential allies, including 10 of her departing cabinet officials and the former president, Corazón Aquino, called on her to step down.

The turnaround by her former supporters makes a resignation by Mrs. Arroyo more likely in the wake of accusations that she rigged the 2004 presidential election by conferring with an election commissioner, officials and analysts said.
...
Mrs. Aquino, who played a role in the "people power" uprisings in 1986 and 2001, went on television Friday to ask Mrs. Arroyo to resign. "I ask the president, in all humility and with full awareness of its difficulty and pain, to make this supreme sacrifice to spare our country from the violence that threatens it," she said.
...
Thousands of anti-Arroyo protesters began gathering in Manila and other parts of the country late on Friday afternoon. Organizers said they would hold an "indefinite vigil" until Mrs. Arroyo stepped down.

Roman Catholic bishops are expected to express their views over the weekend, which could be crucial in influencing public opinion and the president's course of action.

Ramos had his own problems as I recall with corruption, and left the presidency under a cloud. Democracy is tough over there, but they at least keep the flame alive, bad leaders and all...they've never succumbed to the siren call of the rightist elements, they had Marcos for far too long, and they still remember him too well.

I love this line: "in the wake of accusations that she rigged the 2004 presidential election by conferring with an election commissioner,". Golly, I didn't realize that Ken Blackwell was offering his expertise in election-rigging/stealing to the President of the Philippines now.

I'm guessing that we're all "of an age" around here. How many of you all remember going to bed at night worrying about whether or not you and the family and the dog were going to be obliterated in a massive Bikin-Atoll-like H-Bomb explosion. Poof. No more stickball, no more treehouses, no more crotchety old Mrs. Jones-Smythe your mean older-than-the-hills 3rd grade teacher. Blinked out of existance by a completely indifferent bunch of atoms encased in a tube with CCCP on the side.

So it's worth reading things like this, to realize that I'be been through these dark dreams before.

It is usually hard to say what everyone is thinking about, but yesterday you could say it: "It's dangerous to live here," said Craig Fols, an actor. "But I thought this through after 9/11. It's a kind of danger I'm going to live with."

In Chicago, Boston, Miami and San Francisco, people said similar things yesterday, whether with a certain bravado, or on the legs of denial, or from a more tentative resolve. "When I stop to think about it, I don't feel very safe," said Nancy LaMantia, a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., business owner. "But then again, on a day-to-day basis, I feel fine."

The American psyche, if such a four-time-zone mind exists, has for the past four years been poised somewhere between the frantic alarm of Sept. 11, 2001, and the daily routine of the low-grade anxiety that has replaced it. But with a bombing in the heart of a world capital like London - a capital so closely related to America culturally - that equilibrium seems lost, and in its place yesterday, you could sense the raw emotion, and even the fatalism behind it.

But they want us to live in fear.

Perhaps someone in the 1600 Crew could arrange a conjugal visit from Judy's last paramour, Ahmed Chalabi. After all, he boned the American Public, what makes anyone think he'd be reticent about boning his lost love, Judy Judy Judy while she's in stir?

And poor Judy, she's sleeping on the floor tonight...

...though the jail has a reputation among lawyers and corrections officials as a relatively progressive institution, Ms. Miller indicated to her lawyers yesterday that the detention center seemed overcrowded and that she was told she would be sleeping on the floor last night because of a shortage of beds.
...
"At some point before the expiration of that four-month period," Mr. Abrams said, "a lawyer can go back to Judge Hogan and say: 'Blank period of time has passed. She has not revealed her source. There's no reason to think that she will. And so we ask you to free her now.' That is something that does come up routinely in civil contempt situations."

But Charles L. Babcock, a lawyer specializing in First Amendment issues with the Jackson Walker law firm in Dallas, said he was dubious about that strategy's chances of success, given Judge Hogan's rulings.

Well, at least in prison she'll meet a better class of hookers than the media whores she works with every day...at least they're honest about what they provide for their public.

The incredibly attractive and whip-smart Cookie Jill over at Skippy has a letter to send to Judith Miller. Mine's going out today. Cut'n'Paste.

It's better than working on a sultry Friday Afternoon...

Yesterday as many of you may remember, the young Republicans were to have had their Freedom Figher Panel at their Chickehawk Convention in Las Vegas. I have been faithfully checking back to see the annoncement of the panel, but it never appeared. Anyone know the composition/ratio of those who served in Afghanistan & Irq to those who held Keggers for Kevlar?

Just curious...

From Karl Rove's fat ass to Andrew's pox-ridden yap:

I also admire Livingstone's ability to see how liberal and left-wing Londoners who have helped build an amazingly vibrant, diverse and tolerant city are particularly affronted by these medieval monsters.

And people wonder why I despise this self-righteous piece of shit so much.

Well the London attacks do show one thing. A radical difference in Leadership.

The prime minister, Tony Blair, said it was "reasonably clear" that the blasts were the work of terrorists, and added that it was "particularly barbaric" that attacks had been timed to coincide with the start of the G8 summit. He said he would leave Gleneagles, in Scotland, to return to London. emphasis added

Looks like we've been getting certain people in the middle-east better at Explosives 101. Had the 1600 Crew spent the time, manpower and resources on catching a certain al-Qaeda leader, wiping out the remnants of al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and rebuilding the country, it might be a fair guess that the attacks in London might never have happened. Make no mistake, it's a tragedy of the first order, and I suspect that Brits who might have been borderline in their support for Blair might now be willing to see him tossed aside.

Explosions rocked the transportation system across an arc of central London Thursday morning, injuring over a hundred people and killing at least three with the numbers expected to rise, according to early reports.

Described by authorities as a coordinated terrorist attack, the blasts hit at or near three stations of London's subway system, struck an undetermined number of subway carriages in the underground tunnels of the subway and at tore apart least one double-decker bus.

I wish all the best to the families and friends of those that have suffered in this attack. It was pointless and will initially probably do nothing but cause tension between the Muslim and non-Muslim communities in the UK.

I guess that maybe even the densest Neo-con might now be figuring out that bad foreign policy has bad consequences. That is if they can get their head out of their ass long enough to see the situation they have created.

Hey, Good Morning and Guess What! CheneyBurton is getting more of our tax dollars...that's right be multi-national, multi-billion dollar company with friends in VERY high places and be rewarded for questionable billing practices by getting more work!

The Army has ordered nearly $5 billion in work from Halliburton Co. to provide logistics support to U.S. troops in Iraq over the next year, $1 billion above what the Army paid for similar services the previous year.

The new order, which comes despite lingering questions about the company's past billing, replaces an earlier agreement that expired last June but had been extended through this spring to ensure a continuous supply of food, sanitation, laundry and other logistical services for the troops, according to Linda K. Theis, an Army spokeswoman.

Only one thing to say about this.

Almost one year later, Pataki's son Teddy is, with supreme guts and righteousness, seeking a three-year law school deferment from the Marines, which last week commissioned the recent Yale grad as a second lieutenant.

If young 2LT Pataki goes to TBS, then on to the FMF and distinguishes himself as all young O-1's do, by STFU and learning their craft as military officers, sure, let him apply for the Marine Corps JAG program, and go to Law School. Because I'm sure that there are plenty of other Marine Officers whose last name is not Pataki, who would love to be starting Law School next month instead of dumping sand out of their boots every morning in Baghdad.

I have faith that the folks at HQMC will have the stones to make sure young 2LT Pataki's request is given all the consideration it deserves as they explain to him that when it comes to the needs of LT Pataki and the needs of the Marine Corps, the needs of the Corps wins. Since his last name is Pataki, he might even get a personal letter from the Commandant, an honor he'll always remember.

BTW, welcome aboard LT, you've done a great thing. Congratulations.

Wow! Via Skippy this is one of the most interesting things I've seen in a while. I'm actually not sure of the TFH component, but it has a serious ring of truth to it buried in the details. Check it out...

Experienced federal investigators, acting independently, have discovered a covert funding channel used by the 2000 and 2004 Bush-Cheney campaigns and the administrations of Jeb Bush in Florida and Bob Taft in Ohio to illegally funnel foreign and other questionable money into Republican coffers.
...
Eight Florida Panhandle counties west of Tallahassee (Bay, Gulf, Okaloosa, Walton, Holmes, Washington, Santa Rosa, and Escambia) and the border counties of Georgia (Lowndes, Echols, Brooks, Thomas, Grady and Decatur) and Alabama (Houston, Geneva, Covington, Escambia, and Baldwin) have long been centers of illicit Bush activities dating back to the Iran-contra and savings and loan failures. Lowndes County, where Valdosta is located, is a major center for Bush-connected criminal activity. Gulf and Bay counties are centers for Jeb Bush-connected organized crime activity.

Now comes word that "Coingate" in Ohio is tied to the same criminal elements in the GOP that were responsible for turnpike toll money laundering in Florida. Durden's counterpart in Ohio, Tommy Noe, a Bush "Pioneer" contributor whom Gov. Taft appointed to the Ohio Turnpike Commission, is in the center of a major scandal involving missing state funds invested in rare coins and baseball cards. Shortly after the Toledo Blade began reporting on the Ohio coin scandal, Noe resigned from the turnpike commission.
...
Ohio and Florida have the highest turnpike toll rates in the nation coupled with the least oversight. Both states, rife with political corruption fostered by the patrician Republican Taft and Bush families, are now the center of Coingate scandals tied to political chicanery and money laundering.

Manhattan's veteran District Attorney Robert Morgenthau is on the verge of penetrating a major conduit for foreign money into the Bush family network and the American political system that parallels the campaign finance scandals in Ohio and Florida. Morgenthau's investigation of the notorious brothers, Sam and Charlie Wyly of Texas, the billionaires who spearheaded the Swift Boat disinformation campaign against John Kerry and a similar distortion effort against John McCain in 2000, is focused on a Wyly-controlled Isle of Man off-shore account tied to the Bank of America. In 1989, George H. W. Bush dispatched a Houston attorney to the Isle of Man to take charge of the secret Bush accounts. One of the accounts was Five Star Trust, a multi-billion dollar account used by the Bushes as a covert offshore money tranche for their political and business purposes.

From Bart:

Maybe the Pentagon's just not aware of the senior army officer's torture participations?
I saw this statistic in the middle of some NPR story just the other day. It went like this:

The total number of hours spent by our House of Representatives on collection of witness
testimonies on whether Clinton mishandled his holiday greeting card list? Answer: 140 hrs.

Total number of hours devoted by our House of Representatives to investigate U.S. prisoner
abuses in Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib, and Guantanamo? Answer: 5 hrs.

See? Maybe that explains it?
With our representatives devoting so little time to investigating torture, maybe the Pentagon's apparent ignorance of the officer's being considered for promotion was just an oversight.

(But why am I still left swooning? Maybe because I'm so impressed with the streamlining process for reviewing really important scandals now that we're under the guidance of the moral majority?)

dada ~ as exerpted from "Those Dizzying Statistics"

If America had a free press, they might highlight that 140 hours vs 5 hours crap, but we don't.

We have a worship-Bush-24/7 press..

The Corporation for Public Broacasting which is becoming the Corruption of Public Broadcasting is filming an paen to (Present Barf-Bags) Richard Perle. From David Corn's blog:

I'm shocked. Yesterday The New York Times reported that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting had awarded a grant to a close friend of neocon Richard Perle for the purpose of making a film on neocon Richard Perle...and I didn't receive one single email of outrage. This is the sort of stuff that usually generates mucho (and justified) grousing. Almost makes me want to join with conservatives and say, Pull the plug on the CPB. The film, according to its producer, Brian Lapping (who has been pals with Perle for four decades), will show the softer side of Perle and argue that all those people out there who regard Perle as the Price of Darkness are simply misguided. After all, since Lapping has a home next to Perle's in Provence, he knows the real Perle. (Yes, Perle vacations in France!)

It gets worse. The GOP hacks now in charge at CPB did realize they needed some balance. So they also commissioned a film that would be critical of Bush's foreign policy. Note that the CPB did not take steps to insure that the film on Perle would be balanced. No, it greenlighted a project designed as a puff piece about a man who was utterly wrong about Iraq. Recently on this site I chronicled but a few of Perle's whoppers. Before the war, he said there was no doubt that Saddam Hussein had revved up a nuclear weapons program. He also claimed that Iraq could be easily taken with a military force of 40,000 or less. In other words, he knew nothing, but, not letting ignorance stand in the way, he urged America on to war. You think any of this is going to end up as a significant piece of Lapping's wetkiss?

Go see it.

Roll on down to Wally Whirl'd all you red staters. Your Cheap EDLP shit is about to become as endangered as the spotted owl.

The Chinese government on Monday sharply criticized the United States for threatening to erect barriers aimed at preventing the attempted takeover of the American oil company Unocal Corp. by one of China's three largest energy firms, CNOOC Ltd.

Four days after the House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved a resolution urging the Bush administration to block the proposed transaction as a threat to national security, China's Foreign Ministry excoriated Congress for injecting politics into what it characterized as a standard business matter.
...
"We invest too much in U.S. federal bonds, and they don't make us much money," said Pan Rui, a professor at the Center for American Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai. "Now we're learning to invest more wisely, to try to invest in American companies and industries."

I guess they need to understand that when you want to play with the big boys you need to hire an exterminator, a fundamentalist and a toady (pick one, any one). Then you get a christo-fascist or three onboard by hanging a few gay Chinese youths on TV, renounce stem-cell research, announce the flat-earth is in no immediate danger from so-calle "global warming" and by golly then you're ready to play in the Big Leagues of republican Capitalism. Except, you're a commie.

Never mind.

From ent lord in comments:

I can not find a birthdate listed for Kelly Perdew but to figure out his age, he went from high school to West Point, score 18+4=22, and then into the military where he was a Ranger and Intelligence Officer.
Not trusting my memory, a check reveals a Ranger has Basic, Advanced Individual, Airborne then RIP for 3 weeks and then is assigned to a unit for 5-14 months, followed by Advanced Ranger Training for 61 days.
So all Rangers have Airborne (which little skip would have skewered Kerry) and adds up to one to two years total training.
I assume Kelly missed Desert Storm as well as Afghanistan and Iraq so his service must have been during the Iraqi "Hiatus" and he got out as a First Lt, which does not speak of much for a "Westy" or a "Pointer", particularly one who was #1 in his class.
Where are the Swiftboat guys when you need them? I bet they could find out where Kelly is a member of the bar, having completed law school.

Ah, our 29 year-old Chickenhawk Nathan Taylor, the gift that keeps on giving...he's published the "agenda" of the YRNC2005 event, and has even published a sample menu (Carrots Vichy...damn, I thought irony was d-e-a-d). The YrChickenhawks are going to have "Freedom Fighter Panel" too, well here, check it out:

YR FREEDOM FIGHTER PANEL:
The YR FREEDOM FIGHTER PANEL will feature Young Republicans from across the nation who have participated in the fight against terrorism. Many of our members have either fought in Afghanistan or Iraq and bring an intimate perspective regarding the war on terror. This panel will also give YR's the ability to honor our fellow members and U.S. troops. As Young Republicans it is important that we show our support for their efforts on behalf of the United States of America. Participants in this panel will be announced as we get closer to the convention. All of our panels will be interactive, allowing for participants to ask questions of panelists.

As for the timing for announcing the panelists, I guess the Doom tourney is still on-going to determine exactly which cheeto-eating lard-ass gets to get up and share their winning First-Person Shooter stratgies with the assembled Wasted Spermatazoan Tribute to Cowardice and Honoring Preznit Yellow Stripe Convention at the Mandalay Bay.

If in fact they do happen to get a vet of the Iraq or Afghanistan conflicts there, it would be sweet if they would invite some of the highly patriotic young men and women there to join them for a somewhat more extended convening in another, more remote desert. I'll bet right after extending that invite, you could hear a pin drop followed by a massive one-way rush to the exits.

So I'm not an invisible sky-being kinda guy, but you know it's really not such a bad thing to be reaching out the Christians who want to reach out to that part of America who didn't vote for Beloved Leader. Here are a couple of interesting links...one to the United Church of Christ and the other to the Christian Alliance.

Interesting and certainly what I would have to say is "good work".

Looks like the cat is out of the bag, horse left barn...pick your metaphor, mix'em if you've got'em. Rove. Evil little man...soon to be trying to decide if the vertical bars on the window clash with the horizontal stripes on his prison denims?

E-mails surrendered by Time magazine to a grand jury investigating the leak of a CIA agent's identity show that a top White House aide, Karl Rove, was one of the sources, Newsweek magazine reported Sunday.

However, an attorney for Rove told Newsweek that his client "never knowingly disclosed classified information" and that "he did not tell any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA."

A pertinent set of inter-related questions I have seen out and about in blogtopia (1) why is Rove even allowed to be accessing the White House at all now, since there is an investigation which seems to be focusing on him...there's like all that classified information on stuff like pork bellies and post cards from Osama to George thanking him for his continuing freedom and such. (2) Why now is he not been sent packing since there seems to be a definite connection to TREASON in his recent past. Let's have a trial, if he's innocent, then he can have his desk back and all the attorney's bills that go with clearing his name. You know, like what happened to the Clenis™.

In case you know a republican who hasn't been paying attention. This is the BEST July 4th post ever.

Or should I say perhaps..we're sooooo fucked. That deal to avoid the "nuclear" option was always a bad deal. The Senate Dems rolled over and are getting rolled again by the republicans who will take anything and convert it to their own uses.

Democrats' hopes of blocking a staunchly conservative Supreme Court nominee on ideological grounds could be seriously undermined by the six-week-old bipartisan deal on judicial nominees, key senators said yesterday.
...
Under the "Gang of 14" accord, the seven Republican signers agreed to deny Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) the votes he needed to carry out his threat to bar judicial filibusters by changing Senate rules. The seven are implicitly released from the deal if the Democratic signers renege on their end. Yesterday, key players suggested the seven Democrats will automatically be in default if they contend a nominee's ideological views constitute "extraordinary circumstances" that would justify a filibuster.

Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), one of the 14 signers, noted that the accord allowed the confirmation of three Bush appellate court nominees so conservative that Democrats had successfully filibustered them for years: Janice Rogers Brown, William H. Pryor Jr. and Priscilla R. Owen. Because Democrats accepted them under the deal, Graham said on the Fox program, it is clear that ideological differences will not justify a filibuster of a Supreme Court nominee.
...
Sen. Ben Nelson (Neb.), a leader of the seven Democratic signers, largely concurred. Nelson "would agree that ideology is not an 'extraordinary circumstance' unless you get to the extreme of either side," his spokesman, David DiMartino, said in an interview.
...
The 14 signers of the May 23 agreement have said a Supreme Court vacancy would put their accord to its toughest test, and Republicans seemed eager to oblige them. McConnell said the agreement establishes "that there will be no filibusters except under extraordinary circumstances. And we know that judges like Janice Rogers Brown and Bill Pryor and Priscilla Owen are not an extraordinary circumstance."

One of the most interesting conversations in blogtopia (y!sctp!) lately has been about the decentralized vs hierarchical nature of the left and right wing blogs. Ancillary to that has been an on-going conversation about how the right seems to have "locked up" a weird form of succession planning amongst their young republican tru-believers.

Well, we have our "tru-believers" too, and they write blogs. Have you all been to some of the college Democrats sites lately? I blogroll a few and drop by to see what they're talking about and they're pretty damn good. We need to support these guys by adding their voices to our conversations by linking to them, commenting there and in general adding their distinctiveness to our own (obligatory Star Trek thing there).

Really, as Democrats it seems that we don't do shit to support our younger players. Paying attention to what they are saying and doing seems like a great start towards building a "farm team" of our own.

Consider it a 4th of July resolution. Visit one a week.

Here are some places to start:

Brown Democrats
Lion and the Donkey
Burnt Orange Report
KU Democrats
Maine College
Providence College
U of Nebraska - Omaha
University of Delaware
Yale
Stanford
Harvard
Notre Dame

Add them to your bookmarks, stay in touch, link to them if you have a blog (I'm adding all these this week).

Support your local College Democrats. 2006 is right around the corner.

Over the past couple of years, a fellow Navy Vet, Bruce Webb has been a consistent and insightful commenter here. At some point, ol' Bruce snuck off and got his bad self a blog. Bruce, if you have been cruising around Atrios for a while might seem somewhat familiar ...he's a definitive voice on Social Security matters.

Smart stuff. Check it out...

From a column in the Christian Science Monitor, via Yahoo of all things. One of their columnists must have gotten beaned with a brick while walking back from his local coffee shop to his SUV or something. His "Eureka" moment:

I should have written this column a long time ago. It's embarrassing to admit, but I allowed myself to believe that a preposterous situation was normal until a voice in my head suddenly exclaimed, "Hey, wait a minute!"

Our troops in
Iraq and Afghanistan are doing heroic work in conditions that most Americans can't even imagine. So why has the Pentagon exacerbated the hardship by allowing a two-tier payment system to develop in this conflict?

I'm talking about the fact that members of the US military can look out the windows of their Humvees on street patrol and see passing SUVs driven by private security contractors earning salaries that dwarf the average pay of GI Joe and Jane.

A recent PBS Frontline documentary reported that some employees of Blackwater Security are making up to $1,000 per day in Iraq.

Everyone who has one of those "Support Our Troops" magnets on the family car should immediately demonstrate that support by calling their congressional representatives and demanding that American troops stop getting the short end of the stick in the war against terror.

There's not enough room here for a detailed plan, but I'm sure Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has plenty of number crunchers who can rearrange the flow of reimbursement funds.

By the way, Mr. Secretary, when you made that statement about "going to war with the Army you've got," it would have been more honest to add "and whatever freelancers you need to hire along the way for jobs that the Army decides to outsource."

I hope nobody tries to tell me Congress doesn't have time to tackle this issue.

Of course it does. The House, Senate, and president worked at warp speed to pass a bill giving federal judges authority to review the case of a comatose woman in Florida.

Has anyone in Washington got the nerve to call a press conference and announce that equitable pay for our troops is less important than
Terry Schiavo's feeding tube?

We're going to be in Iraq and Afghanistan for a long time. Our troops should never be treated - or paid - as second-rate warriors. Some budget-watchers may say we can't afford to give them a better deal. I say we can't afford not to.

If I had a single wish, it would be to educate the members of the military about the voting records of their members of congress on all matters that dealt with their pay and allowances and once a quarter lock them in a room with some of these soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines to explain their votes. In detail, and with no bodyguards. Oh, and hand out the congresscriminal's pay and benefits sheet to each attendee as they arrived in the room.

It would be, shall we say "colorful", to use be a polite word.

This is a welcome development in the war for the return of our country...

America's moderate and progressive evangelists, outgunned for years by the mighty "religious right," are demanding their own share of the political action.

Their mantra, in a building campaign against conservative Christians, a key constituency of
President George W. Bush, is: "Since when was God pro-war, and pro-rich?
...
Christians opposed to Bush, the most overtly religious president of modern times, say his war in
Iraq, and tax cuts which they claim favor the rich, do not square with a faith which teaches followers to love their neighbor.

"We can no longer stand by and watch people speak hatred, division, war and greed in the name of our faith," said Patrick Mrotek, founder of the new Christian Alliance for Progress. "We must reclaim our faith."

...activists like Wallis, who heads the Sojourners national faith-based group, see a huge silent majority that could benefit Democrats in future elections.

"If Democrats just talk policy and don't talk about moral issues, they are going to keep on losing," warned Wallis, whose book "God's Politics" camped out in The New York Times bestseller list for 16 weeks.

"The religious left in this country hates and despises the God of Christianity and Catholicism and whatever else," the high priest of conservative talk radio, Rush Limbaugh, said on his show April 27. "They despise it because they fear it and it's a threat, because that God has moral absolutes, that God has right and wrong, that God doesn't deal in nuance."

General JC Christian, Heterosexual, has a link to a Young Republican conference press release put out by the incredibly ignorant "chairman" of the YRNC politburo assuring the faithful that us heathens would not be able to disrupt their lovefest.

He also proudly proclaims the attendance as the "master of ceremonies" for the conference of Kelly Perdew, winner of "The Apprentice".

Additionally, star of the television show The Apprentice, former Marine and military booster Kelly Perdew shall serve as master of ceremonies at the premier Convention event.

Kelly also served as a military intelligence officer in the US Army and successfully completed both Airborne and Ranger training. He holds a BS degree from the United States Military Academy, West Point...

"The childish insults and threatened protests of these leftists reveal ignorance of, and disrespect for, the sacrifice borne by many hosted by the Convention," Taylor continued. "Most of our members either serve, have served, or plan to serve in the United States Armed Forces, or have participated in events or projects supporting the United States Armed Forces. We will not be intimidated."

As for Kelly Perdew being their Master of Ceremonies, he's basically a hired gun. Pay him enough, he'll show up, I'm supposing. It's what he does. If he's all that committed to he YRNC chickenhawks, more power to him. I'd be interested to hear his take on some of these 'yr's' who want to avoid serving at all costs while making up every excuse in the book while cheerleading the death and dismemberment of others doing their fighting for them in a war they support by shopping and being assholes in general.

Just a note and a thought. If you're going to be in Las Vegas this coming weekend when the YRNC is taking place, stop by and ask Mr. Taylor about his worst day walking point or one of thousands of other activities that make up the life of a warrior. Best response gets published here.

Operation Foot-in-Mouth.

This is a critical moment for the president, a moment when he can reach back to a political center he has recently eschewed during a war in which a bitter and divisive internal fight should be avoided, if at all possible. I'm hoping for a reasonable and not overly ideological choice. What I'm expecting is another matter.

If I had not read this in an occasionally useful fishwrap, I'd a said, "awww, you're making it up". Seems that someone is catching on to the fact that the 1600 Crew is obsessed with....secrecy. See Wes Clark's quote at right...but now, don't tell them that we know that they know what we know, because that's a (sssssh) secret.

Driven in part by fears of terrorism, government secrecy has reached a historic high by several measures, with federal departments classifying documents at the rate of 125 a minute as they create new categories of semi-secrets bearing vague labels like "sensitive security information."
...
The increasing secrecy - and its rising cost to taxpayers, estimated by the office at $7.2 billion last year - is drawing protests from a growing array of politicians and activists, including Republican members of Congress, leaders of the independent commission that studied the Sept. 11 attacks and even the top federal official who oversees classification.
...
But across the political spectrum there is concern that the hoarding of information could backfire. Thomas H. Kean, chairman of the Sept. 11 commission and a former Republican governor of New Jersey, said the failure to prevent the 2001 attacks was rooted not in leaks of sensitive information but in the barriers to sharing information between agencies and with the public.

"You'd just be amazed at the kind of information that's classified - everyday information, things we all know from the newspaper," Mr. Kean said. "We're better off with openness. The best ally we have in protecting ourselves against terrorism is an informed public."

Mr. Kean said he could not legally disclose examples he discovered of unnecessary classification. But others cite cases of what they call secrecy running amok: the Central Intelligence Agency's court fight this year to withhold its budgets from the 1950's and 60's; the Defense Intelligence Agency's deletion of the fact that the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was interested in "fencing, boxing and horseback riding"; and the Justice Department's insistence on blacking out a four-line quotation of a published Supreme Court decision.

Mr. Cornyn, a former state attorney general, said he had been trying to persuade his colleagues that freedom of information was not just a concern of the news media. "The people should get the information they need to see if government is doing what they want," he said.
...
Such missteps may come in part from inexperience. Since 2001, President Bush has extended the power to classify documents to the heads of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture. At the Agriculture Department, where officials are concerned about agroterrorism, employees can visit the agency's Web site and easily print out a bright-yellow "sensitive security information" cover sheet.

The secrecy wave has reached obscure outposts of federal power. Wes Addington, a lawyer in Prestonsburg, Ky., who represents mine workers filing safety complaints, said the Mine Safety and Health Administration now denied him documents under the Freedom of Information Act that a few years ago were routinely provided.

"Honestly, I don't understand the reason," Mr. Addington said. "I don't see how releasing this stuff would hurt the government."

A spokeswoman for the safety agency, Suzanne Bohnert, said it began withholding inspectors' notes because their release could "harm ongoing enforcement matters."

But a spokesman for the National Security Council, Frederick L. Jones II, said the effect of the Ashcroft memorandum had been "greatly exaggerated" by critics. Mr. Jones blamed the increasing use of e-mail for the rapid rise in classified documents. He added that the president had nominated members for a planned Public Interest Declassification Board that would guard against excessive secrecy.

"The administration is proud of its record of openness," Mr. Jones said.

I guess that it's never a good idea to question the wisdom of allowing government officials from a major lobbying group to be able to randomly apply a label of "sensitive security information" when the economic interests of your once-and-future employers might be threatend, eh?

I'm off to get my campaign-contributor/government-paid lobbyist approved snack of BSE-laced prions in a macho-sized burger with a side of e-coli and wash it down with a healthy pull of mercury.

The campaign to try and seat a Justice Worse than Clarence Thomas is being led by one Manuel Miranda. Who? This guy.

The counsel on judicial nominations for Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) has resigned in response to a probe of how Republican staff members gained access to Democratic computer files on President Bush's most controversial choices for the federal judiciary.
...
Miranda's resignation comes in the midst of an investigation by the Senate sergeant-at-arms, with help from the Secret Service and forensic experts, into whether GOP staffers improperly or perhaps illegally tapped into Democratic strategy memos on a computer server shared by Judiciary Committee members of both parties.

It's fascinating how the republicans have managed to build a government based on victimization (reverse discrimination), revenge (the New Deal) and greed (examples: not required). Some things never change, do they?

Yeah, I saw it on the Crap New Net from the hotel. And for the most part I agree with Quiddity. The train is on the tracks and the allegedly "moderate" republicans are going to get a huuuge surprise when the nominee is announced and probably placed on the court.

Speculation? The early front-runner in my book: Abu Gonzales. Preznit Spineless Invertebrate gets to go for big points within the Hispanic community, watch Salazar shepard this in the spirit of "bi-partisanhip" right before he goes all Ben Nighthorse Campbell in Harry Reid's ass. Gonzales is that most valuable of all nominees; a loyal camp follower, who has a built-in constituency and has passed recent muster in the Senate despite all his objectionable and thoroughly un-American but wholeheartedly republican positions on Everything.

If this were pinball and not politics, the "Tilt" light would have been lit long ago. Unfortunately too many in our party tried to take the high ground an argue, argue, argue policy while getting whacked by politics. The end result has begun to arrive.

No more Mr. Nice Guy. Filibuster all.

It's been 229 Years of the Republic

and now 1745 American Casualties

Because a Fucking Zero Lied

Happy Birthday to US.

So off we go for a couple of days, and an urgent email arrives telling us of my paternal grandmother being hospitalized overseas for unknown causes...she was in the ICU, and not expected to make it. But, hey to a little old lady who's like 98 and a lifelong vegetarian, what's a little dehydration? She was released at the end of the week, so all the worry, planning for the worst were for naught, thank goodness. She's fine and back "home" now (she lives in a sort-of retirement community), and being looked after by some friends she once did a good turn for. (Pay it forward...)

Thanks a million for all your kind words and emails. I truly appreciate it.

Jo

1. Off for a week
   
2. Who woke 'em up?
   
3. Line of Succession
   
4. A Headline to remember...
   
5. Running Scared in Ohio
   
6. Operation Mid-Term Flight Retreat
   
7. Time for a Name Change?
   
8. CongressCriminal Control
   
9. Gee, I feel so sorry for him...NOT!
   
10. Nothing to Fear but republicans selling fear