From the oldies-but-goodies file, in light of the attempted "rehabilitation" of Michael Ledeen by some on the right:

I think the level of casualties is secondary. I mean, it may sound like an odd thing to say, but all the great scholars who have studied American character have come to the conclusion that we are a warlike people and that we love war. . . . What we hate is not casualties but losing. And if the war goes well and if the American public has the conviction that we're being well-led and that our people are fighting well and that we're winning, I don't think casualties are going to be the issue.
Michael Ledeen
AEI Breakfast
March 27, 2003

I think the American people are going to have great tolerance for the war taking longer, and they are going to have great tolerance for more casualties.
William Kristol
AEI Breakfast
March 27, 2003

In Miami today Beloved Leader is speechifying again about Lebanon. Interestingly, he's once again doing it from the cover of a US Armed Forces venue, because, I suspect that he's too cowardly to go out and face a crowd of actual Americans who might not agree with his Rove-approved talking points.

"The current crisis is part of a larger struggle between the forces of freedom and the forces of terror in the Middle East," Mr. Bush said in a speech at the Coast Guard command center in Miami.

"For decades, the status quo in the Middle East permitted tyranny and terror to thrive," the president said. "And as we saw on Sept. 11, the status quo in the Middle East led to death and destruction in the United States, and it had to change."

It seems to me that until recently, the US was seen as an "honest broker" in the middle east, and that helped us to work with everyone towards a resolution of the thousands of years of conflicts that have raged there. I guess that Bunnypants figures that if he can find Jeeezus and quit drinking (if he really has), it ought to be a piece of cake to just shake hands and sing kumbaya in the orange groves at sunset.

Yeah, that's the ticket!

From today's Daily Dan:

President Bush's "moment of opportunity" in the Middle East is increasingly looking like an opportunity for disaster.
...
In the best of circumstances, Bush would be running the risk of being considered callous. But in the current circumstances, he runs the risk of being considered both callous and delusional.

So now the republicans are fighting tooth-and-nail not to have their co-poster boy for corruption (along with Ralphie, Jackie and Duke-stir) be on the ballot for Congress in November. Interestingly, the courts don't seem to be buying it. The Texas Republicans have taken the argument on to the 5th Circuit in New Orleans (New Orleans? That makes it funny on a whole other level...)

Texas Republicans asked a federal appeals court on Monday to let them replace former U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay on the November congressional ballot, but Democrats argued that Texas state law requires keeping DeLay as the GOP candidate.

DeLay won a March primary before resigning from Congress in June amid a growing scandal. He is awaiting trial on money laundering and conspiracy charges connected to the financing of Texas legislative campaigns in 2002 with alleged illegal corporate money.
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A federal judge ruled in early July that DeLay's name had to stay on the ballot even though he quit Congress and moved to Virginia.
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Texas law allows a political party to replace a candidate if he or she dies, becomes medically incapacitated or becomes ineligible for office. If the candidate simply "withdraws" from the race after winning his or her primary, a new candidate cannot be chosen.

As Jim Traficante might be able to share with him, it's hard to be a Congressman from Cell Block "A". I wonder which prison gang ol'Tommy boy would have to join to survive in the prison yard? I'm guessing it might be a limited choice since all the blacks and hispanics have all the good spots...they might not want him.

Wow! What a dynamo that Condi is...

BUSH: We share the same urgency of trying to stop the violence. That's why Condi Rice went out there very quickly.

Her job is to -- first and foremost, was to make it clear to the Lebanese people that we wanted to send aid and help, and help work on the corridors necessary to get the aid to the Lebanese people.

In the transcript of the Preznit 2stupidt2believe and Yo! Tony! Presser, it looks like they invoked "September the 11th" no less than six times.

From today's news conference with his pet Poodle. Thus spaketh Preznit No Grey:

...There's a lot of suffering in the Palestinian territory because militant Hamas is trying to stop the advance of democracy. ...

de·moc·ra·cy Audio pronunciation of "democracy" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (d-mkr-s)
n. pl. de·moc·ra·cies

1. Government by the people, exercised either directly or through elected representatives.
2. A political or social unit that has such a government.
3. The common people, considered as the primary source of political power.
4. Majority rule.
5. The principles of social equality and respect for the individual within a community.

Hamas won 74 of 132 seats in the January 2006 Palestinian legislative election and is now the majority party of the Palestinian Legislative Council. Its vehemently anti-Israeli rhetoric has found a receptive audience amongst Palestinians, some of whom perceived the preceding Fatah government as corrupt and ineffective. Hamas has also established an extensive network of welfare programs throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip, further adding to its popularity. Since Hamas took control, the Palestinian territories have experienced a period of sharp internal conflicts, known as Fauda, in which many Palestinians were killed in internecine fighting.

We were not exactly big fans of the Soviets, and their form of government, but successive Adminstrations from Truman on worked with them slowly and incrementally to end the Cold War. We certainly were no more the ideological soul-mates of the Communists than we are of the Islamist Arabs, but we all have to live on this one planet.

Unless of course, Fearless Leader is planning manned missions to Mars using Hamas and Hezbollah volunteers.

From a Kos Diary.

What was it that Charleton Heston's character said at the end of "Planet of the Apes"?

The 1600 Crew economic policies at work. I guess that Beloved Leader's promise to "jawbone" the House of Saud into keeping oil supplies and prices in check turns out to be just another line of Texas BS from the penultimate Transplanted Texan himself.

U.S. economic growth slowed and inflation rose in the three months ending in June, the government reported today, confirming earlier signs that consumers are hunkering down in response to higher energy prices and interest rates.

Businesses also spent less on home building and on equipment and software, while federal-government spending dropped in the second quarter. All totaled, the nation's gross domestic product, which measures the value of all goods and services produced, rose at a below-average 2.5 percent annual rate in the second quarter, a sharp drop from the rapid 5.6 percent pace of the first quarter, the Commerce Department said.
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Much of the inflation in the second quarter was due to rising energy prices, as oil shot above $70 a barrel and gasoline averaged close to $3 a gallon. And oil and gasoline prices have moved higher since June, suggesting price pressures remain strong.

More troubling to many economists were signs that more businesses are passing their energy costs on to consumers, and are finding it easier to raise prices generally. So-called "core inflation," which excludes volatile food and energy items, rose at a 2.9 percent annual rate in the second quarter, according to the Commerce Department's measure, which is favored by Fed policymakers. That was up sharply from the 2.1 percent rate of the first quarter, and well above Bernanke's preferred range of 1 to 2 percent.

It's gonna just get more interesting. Every day it's something, and not too often is it good. I think people are finally starting to figure out you get what you vote for.

Here it is, in black and white. The lawn order republican congresscriminals voted for something and now they are against it. Or at least the 1600 Crew is...who'da thunk it?

An obscure law approved by a Republican-controlled Congress a decade ago has made the Bush administration nervous that officials and troops involved in handling detainee matters might be accused of committing war crimes, and prosecuted at some point in U.S. courts.
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Some human rights groups and independent experts say they oppose undermining the reach of the War Crimes Act, arguing that it deters government misconduct. They say any step back from the Geneva Conventions could provoke mistreatment of captured U.S. military personnel. They also contend that Bush administration anxieties about prosecutions are overblown and should not be used to gain congressional approval for rough interrogations.

"The military has lived with" the Geneva Conventions provisions "for 50 years and applied them to every conflict, even against irregular forces. Why are we suddenly afraid now about the vagueness of its terms?" asked Tom Malinowski, director of the Washington office of Human Rights Watch.
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The War Crimes Act, in contrast, affords access to civilian courts for abuse perpetrated by former service members and by civilians. The government has not filed any charges under the law.

The law's legislative sponsor is one of the House's most conservative members, Rep. Walter B. Jones Jr. (R-N.C.). He proposed it after a chance meeting with a retired Navy pilot who had spent six years in the notorious "Hanoi Hilton," a Vietnamese prison camp. The conversation left Jones angry about Washington's inability to prosecute the pilot's abusers.
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The law initially criminalized grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions but was amended without a hearing the following year to include violations of Common Article 3, the minimum standard requiring that all detainees be treated "humanely." The article bars murder, mutilation, cruel treatment, torture and "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment." It applies to any abuse involving U.S. military personnel or "nationals."

Jones and other advocates intended the law for use against future abusers of captured U.S. troops in countries such as Bosnia, El Salvador and Somalia, but the Pentagon supported making its provisions applicable to U.S. personnel because doing so set a high standard for others to follow. Mary DeRosa, a legal adviser at the National Security Council from 1997 to 2001, said the threat of sanctions in U.S. courts in fact helped deter senior officials from approving some questionable actions. She said the law is not an impediment in the terrorism fight. my emphasis

Our Glorious Decider-in-Chief loves to dress up in the uniforms he disgraced back in the 70's when he could not even obey a simple order to get a mandatory Flight Physical. Perhaps his attorneys, from Abu Gonzales on down are telling him that his role as Asshat-in-Chief might leave him open to prosecution in the Hague for War Crimes even under existing US law, and that he better cover himself retroactively as long as he's got a rubber-stamp Congress to do it with.

The military did the right thing in accepting an imposition of higher standards for itself. Too bad that their current civilian leadership in comprised essentially of self-serving invertebrates and sycophants whose ideas of patriotism is sending the other guy's kids off to die in misbegotten adventures, so theirs can stay home and make a buck or six million.

This certainly goes to the solemnity of the violence in the Middle East. I'm glad that Kinda Lyin' just has Brahms in her soul.

In keeping with her mood and to reflect the world crises she tackles daily, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice plans to play a somber piece of music to her Asian colleagues in Malaysia this week.

The Association of South East Asian Nations has a tradition of ministers performing usually silly skits at a gala dinner, but Rice, an accomplished pianist, said she was more at ease playing a serious, reflective piece, possibly by the composer Brahms.

“It is not a time that is frivolous. It is a serious time. I will play something that is in accordance with my serious mood,” said Rice, who had just attended a conference in Rome aimed at helping resolve the Lebanon crisis.

Rice said she would not be comfortable singing show tunes.

“I trust my piano playing more than I trust Karen’s singing,” joked Rice, referring to her public diplomacy chief, Karen Hughes, who is also in Kuala Lumpur. Hughes quickly shot back: “She’s right, I can’t even hum.”

That might make the christofascists ecstatic, the world would end shortly after Karen and Condi performed, having violated the commandment concerning "Love thy Neighbor" one time too often.

Well, here's a bit-o' blast of the obvious headed for the ears of the oblivious...

The federal government will need to either cut spending or raise taxes down the road to pay for extending President Bush's recent tax cuts, the Treasury Department said in a report released yesterday, dismissing the idea popular with many Republicans that such sacrifices can be avoided.
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But the Treasury's view reflects "a recognition the federal government has to finance the tax relief" to avoid a rise in government debt, Robert Carroll, deputy assistant secretary for tax analysis, said in an interview.

The report stressed that the economic effects of extending the tax cuts "depend crucially on whether they are financed by lower spending or higher taxes in the future."

Any third-grader would have been able to tell the republicans that eventually the bill would come due. The question is, why would they listen to a third-grader when they all listened instead to a Harvard MBA who had no clue?

This is even more amazing looking at how Treasury tries to justify toeing the administration line and keep the tax cuts in place in perpetuity...

The Treasury report was its first using "dynamic analysis," an approach that looks at how tax changes alter consumer and business behavior in ways that affect the economy's growth.

A reduction in income tax rates, for example, might initially reduce the government's revenue, but over time might encourage more people to work, and to put in longer hours, increasing tax payments to the government over time.

See? It all works out in the end...

I'm not a big follower of events in the Middle-East, meaning Israel. I know that I am in awe of what the Israeli people have carved out of the deserts of the region, how they have managed to bring their country along as democracy in a region infested with ancient feudal governments and how they have managed to move on after the collective horrors inflicted on them in all the centuries leading to the Holocaust and the years of that genocide. As some might say; "It's all good", but now with their country being threatened again by some of the same people who can't seem to get over the reality of Israel, I have to wonder if the bombing of Lebanon is not crossing a line they might regret later.

Do the Israelis have right to defend themselves? Not even a question. Are they justified in bombing Beirut and other places because they suspect that Hezbollah forces occupy civilian areas? I'm not sure that falls into the scope of defensive action, as I understand it.

Military action to attempt to find and take out the rocket launchers in range of the border is an understandable and explainable objective. Strafing ambulances, and bombing apartment buildings in Beirut and destabilizing the government of a fledgling Democracy, well perhaps somewhat less supportable.

I also see the lack of involvement of the 1600 Crew until day 12 of the current crisis as being nothing short of accomdationist to the Israeli version of Six-shooter Diplomacy as practiced by Preznit Shower Boi. So is it any surprise that Condi the Would-be Dominatrix of Diplomacy is having a tough time inserting herself into the process this far down the road?

The United States and Britain opposed the push for a quick cease-fire, saying any truce should ensure that Hezbollah no longer is a threat to Israel and should ensure a durable peace.

Palestinian officials said after their private meeting with Rice that she presented nothing new on their dispute with Israel. Separately, Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, whose Hamas party was not present at the session, said from what he heard about Rice's conversation with President Mahmoud Abbas, it "doesn't augur well" for a solution to the Middle East crisis.
...
"I have no doubt there are those who wish to strangle a democratic and sovereign Lebanon in its crib," Rice said. "We, of course, also urgently want to end the violence."

Somehow the reality of the use of terrorism as a political tactic, which can be countered long-term by political means as has been conveniently overlooked by those who seem to think that frontal assaults of military forces will win the day. It's evident that the macho nonsense of the Neo-cons and PNAC have again won the day in influencing policy from the Oval Office. I suspect that had the occupant of the Oval Office been anyone other than Shower Boi, the G8 meeting would have had a predominant subtext of beginning a peace process in the Middle East, and not one of making jokes about Chirac's gastronomical preferences and massage therapy for Angela Merkel.

It's a mess, and I have to suspect that even Daddy Bush is pissed that Junior is making as mess of it in a way that may become irreversible for a generation or more.

Newsweek does a kind of interesting profile of Preznit Drunken DEKE at the G8 Summit. While it does have some of the slavish Finemanian/Woodwardian praiseprose:

Onboard, Bush is demanding constant updates from his national-security adviser Steve Hadley, who is holed up in a staff cabin, speed-dialing officials around the world to get a better read on the situation. "Let's find out more of what's going on about the Israeli plan," Bush tells Hadley. The president reminds his staff that this time last year, when he was in Scotland for another G8 summit of world leaders, suicide bombers struck the London subway. It becomes a grim joke: another G8, another crisis. Bush's day has barely begun and the region he has tried so hard to reshape and rebuild is on the verge of all-out war.

"Sometimes, in order to get others to act with us," he says, "there has to be conditions on the ground that make the case better than I can make it." It hasn't always turned out that way: in Iraq, conditions on the ground have long conspired against Bush and driven allies away.

Bush has a full day ahead with Putin, but first his aides have a long list of subjects to cover with him. In a prebriefing session they try to cram him with talking points on a vast array of issues. Bush, who hates to get bogged down in the weeds, has heard enough. "How long do you want this list to be?" he snaps. At least he doesn't need to make small talk; last night's dinner has dispensed with that. "It makes it easier to sit down and get right to the subject," Bush says. "You don't have to break ice and establish rapport."

Bush doesn't know that Putin has been readying a joke of his own. When asked a predictable question about the state of Russia's democracy, Putin pounces: "We certainly would not want to have the same kind of democracy as they have in Iraq, I will tell you quite honestly." There are guffaws from the Russian media and gasps from American reporters. Struggling to hear the translation, Bush joins in the laughter before catching himself. "Just wait," he snaps back, and his smile fades.

Now, as he prepares for yet another press session, this time with Blair, his aides remind him of the complete wording. Bush is annoyed by his errors and frustrated that he must repeat the whole thing: the entire explanation runs to 190 words. "It was a reminder to him that you have to make a full case," says Bush's counselor Dan Bartlett. "You can't just give one assessment. You have to touch all the bases."

If the press questions are painful, Bush finds the lengthy summit sessions almost unbearable. The negotiations were concluded long ago, and all that's left is a procession of windy statements—which some of the other leaders endure better than Bush. After one working lunch that runs late, the president returns to his cottage and staggers through the door as if he's exhausted. It's only halfway through the first full day of the summit. For someone who usually spends no more than one night in a foreign country, the four-day trip to Russia seems like an eternity.

That afternoon the leaders are promised they will see the final text of their statement on the Middle East, which calls on Hizbullah to end its rocket attacks and then urges Israel to end its military strikes. But the document fails to arrive at the promised hour of 4, and it's still not there at 5 o'clock. Bush has had it. "I'm going home," he says to the room full of presidents and prime ministers. "I'm going to get a shower. I'm just about meeting'd out." Some of the leaders suggest they should all work out their differences together. But Bush can no longer keep up appearances. "I thought that was a lousy idea and so did others," Bush says later. "It would lose focus and everybody would then have an opinion."

The PAC that Tom Delay rode for years and used to help him establish his majority in the US House of Representatives is being shut down by the Federal Elections Commission.

The fundraising organization that helped vault former Rep. Tom DeLay to Republican leadership ranks in the House and distributed election money to numerous Republicans has been fined for campaign finance violations and is shutting down.

Under an agreement with the Federal Election Commission, Americans for a Republican Majority's political action committee agreed to pay a $115,000 fine and close. The agreement, reached July 7, was made public late Wednesday.
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"The reason DeLay became so powerful was all about the money, the amounts of money he could pull in and could distribute to his colleagues," said Melanie Sloan, the watchdog group's executive director. "Nearly every Republican in Congress received money from ARMPAC, thus consolidating his power base. They loved him because he kept them flush. Now we find out, they brought in huge amounts of money, but they did it illegally."

This certainly can't help Delay's case in court in the long run, and might even be another nail in his coffin in terms of his criminal prosecution. For the last six years (and more) we've had to listen to the republidroids saying that "we should just win elections"...well, now that the corruption in their party that allowed them to buy elections is being revealed slowly but surely, perhaps we will.

Me, I'm looking forward to November. I don't know how well the fear card will play, given the mis-playing of every hand the republican-controlled government has been dealt...and with an almost infinitely stacked deck of cards they've had to play with.

So the V-22 went to Farnborough. Seems that Bell wants to sell that POS to other governments to offset the cost of it's development and production, but at about 70 million a copy there are not too many governments who are going to snap up a fleet of them.

The first squadron of V-22's is scheduled to be deployed next fall and, at the moment, the Marines have been promised 360 of these planes. At a cost of about $70 million each — the total program cost is $49 billion - the Osprey is one of the Marines' most expensive weapons. The Marines have staked their future on this craft, and have about 40 flying today at various American bases, but none overseas or in combat.
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Michael A. Redenbaugh, chief executive of Bell Helicopter, said his company was working with the Marines to try to reduce the cost to around $58 million a plane, and he predicted that it could be done in four years. But for countries whose defense budgets are only a fraction of the Pentagon’s, even $58 million can be a high price for a single plane.
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The Marine Corps had made a big show of announcing it would fly two Ospreys over the Atlantic to arrive before the show - for the first time - to demonstrate its long-range capability. But, on the way over, one of the planes developed engine problems in bad weather and made an unplanned landing in Iceland, where a $2 million engine was replaced before it could continue on its way.
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One of its biggest critics has been Vice President Dick Cheney, who tried to kill the program in the late 1980’s when he was secretary of defense. But his attempts were rebuffed in Congress, where Bell Helicopter and Boeing led a lobbying effort that kept the program alive. Work on the V-22 is spread over 40 states and 200 Congressional districts, giving it powerful grass-roots support.

Besides its safety record, a big criticism of the plane is its high cost. It will largely replace the CH-46 Sea Knight helicopters, which date back to the Vietnam era but cost one-quarter the price of the Osprey.
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"We'll pay a little more, but we'll get a heck of a lot," Gen. John G. Castellaw said at the news conference. "The Marine Corps has a lot of wants and needs, but not a lot of money. It's up to me to balance out wants and needs of the Marine Corps with available resources and I think we can do it."

The argument that the Osprey will be a good and viable replacement for the 46 is silly, if you look at the service record of the Sea Knight. Not only was the venerable CH-46 used by both the Navy and the Marine Corps, it's managed to remain in service for 40+ years, a tribute to some solid engineering and easy, accessible maintenance.

Had the Marine Corps (and Navy) chosen to update the Sea Knight airframe and invest in more research in rotary wing dynamics for things like the Advancing Blade Concept (ABC) which showed promise in overcoming the forward-speed limitations of all helicopter, the problemmatic Osprey might have died as a fledging in it's nest at Boeing/Bell.

Oh, and I love General Castellaw's remark "We'll pay a little more, but we'll get a heck of a lot" ... a little more than what? That's some serious inside-the-Pentagram thinking there folks. Back the future again, I wonder if the Osprey will have $400 milspec toilet seats/relief tubes?

So Preznit Born-again Deke has unsurprinsingly vetoed the stem cell legislation, thus ensuring the disposal of millions of blastocyst Americans in medical-waste company's furnaces and disposal facilities. I guess that at 150 cells per Blastocyst American he's making progress one not-quite sentient American, like himself, at a time.

President Bush vetoed a bill for the first time today, using his constitutional power to reject legislation passed by Congress that would expand federal research on embryonic stem cells, a step he said would be crossing a “moral line.

Preznit Merkel Massager seems to be able to observe "moral lines" well whenever there's a vote to be pandered, or a constituency caressed. Observing "moral lines" in doing the right thing, eh, not so much.

I guess that scientific advances will have to wait until we can afford to pay for them as a nation anyhow. That ought to be sometime around the yeat 2525, if the Republic is still alive thanks to the short-sighted policies of the republican governance corps.

If you only read one post today (besides mine...lol) read this one by Dave Johnson over at Seeing the Forest.

It's incredible.

Oh, this is too rich, in more ways than one.

On a clear, cold morning in February 2003, Nico de Boer heard what sounded like a clap of thunder and stepped outside his hillside home for a look. High above the tree line, the 40-year-old dairy farmer saw a trail of smoke curling across the sky -- all that remained of the space shuttle Columbia.

Weeks later, de Boer was startled to learn that he was one of hundreds of East Texas ranchers entitled to up to $40,000 in disaster compensation from the federal government, even though the nearest debris landed 10 to 20 miles from his cattle.

In all, the Livestock Compensation Program cost taxpayers $1.2 billion during its two years of existence, 2002 and 2003. Of that, $635 million went to ranchers and dairy farmers in areas where there was moderate drought or none at all, according to an analysis of government records by The Washington Post. None of the ranchers were required to prove they suffered an actual loss. The government simply sent each of them a check based on the number of cattle they owned.
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...In some cases, USDA administrators prodded employees in the agency's county offices to find qualifying disasters, even if they were two years old or had nothing to do with ranching or farming.

Like those infomercials, "But wait, there's MORE!!!"...

Shortly before the 2002 congressional elections, the Bush administration faced growing pressure from ranchers and politicians in a handful of Western states that were hit hard by drought. Of special political concern to the White House, sources said, was South Dakota, where Republican Rep. John Thune was close to unseating Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson.

The USDA responded with a plan to give ranchers cash payments based on how much livestock they owned. A beef cow would count for $18; a dairy cow, $31.50. Lesser payments would be awarded for buffalo and sheep. The maximum an individual rancher could get was $40,000.

Agriculture officials estimated the program would require $752 million. But so many ranchers and dairy farmers applied that the cost quickly ballooned to $900 million. At the time, a second year of the program wasn't being contemplated.

I guess that in farming, if it's not a "sure thing" that you have a good season in an America controlled by the republican party, just whine a little more and some money will magically appear in your mailbox. I'd be the last person to say I want to see farmers fail, but let's face it, there's risk in agriculture like anything else, it just seems that farmers/ranchers/whatever seem to feel that they are entitled to have that risk mitigated out by our tax dollars.

And those of my great-grandchildren who will pay for this republican 'free money' madness for about a century and a half.

Who knew? Well, someone must've, since I've never read James Dobson's autobiography.

People who abuse animals are people with problems. Big problems. People who do it for fun, and then "brag" about it, are even more sociopathic, IMHO. via the Carpetbagger Report:

Even more alarming, Dobson admits in one of his books that as a child he arranged a fight between two mismatched dogs. The battle involved a tenacious bulldog and a "sweet, passive Scottie named Baby," and Dobson provoked it by throwing a tennis ball toward Baby. He writes what happened next: "The bulldog went straight for Baby's throat and hung on. It was an awful scene. Neighbors came running from everywhere as the Scottie screamed in terror. It took ten minutes and a garden hose for the adults to pry loose the bulldog's grip. By then Baby was almost dead. He spent two weeks in the animal hospital, and I spent two weeks in the doghouse. I was hated by the entire town."

As any child psychologist will tell you, this type of cruelty toward animals is a sign of a serious psychological disturbance.

Ambitious for a prissy little bully-boy isn't it? But not really wholly unexpected either.

Oh, my. Beloved Leader said the word "shit" at a G-8 conference luncheon. I guess the FCC will be calling in panels of experts at the request of Brit Hume, Donald Wildmona and James Dobson to see if our republic will fall because Bunnypants the Younger used one of their Officially Proscribed Words!

All over Wingnuttia, women are creaming and men are feeling manly (in a good way) because their Beloved One sounded positively Texan!

Holy Shit!

The end is near!

The immigration debate, which the more racist wing of the republican party is staking part of their 2006 electoral hopes on, sure has some ah, "interesting" people arguing their side for them. From an article on the carpet industry in Georgia, which is trying to toss every illegal alien out of the state, is this little gem about Preening Chickenhawk Hypocrite Extraordinaire Saxby Chambliss: (my emphasis)

Another turning point came in 1998, when immigration agents raided the Vidalia onion fields, putting the valuable harvest in jeopardy, only to be called off after Georgia congressmen protested to the Clinton administration. One protest came from then-Rep. Saxby Chambliss (R), now a senator and an advocate of deporting illegal immigrants.

It'll be interesting to see how this plays out. I don't know what the percentage of Georgia state income tax revenue comes from the workers in the carpet mill, whether they are legal or illegal, but it can't be small numbers. The total amount of money that the state collects from the mills is significant enough that if they were to move over the border because of the Mohawk lawsuit or pure economics, I suspect that the backlash would be pretty severe...Ol' Saxby might have more time every day to run more miles from his home office in Unemployment, Georgia than he is currently counting on following his next election cycle.

Georgia politics being what they are now, it'll be interesting to watch how this plays with the good ol'boys vs. the conservative republican-leaning companies that are enabling the illegals tenure with jobs and a piece of the American Dream. Some companies and industries that have never been particularly 'sociall conscious' might find themselves wondering what hit them if the good ol' boys prevail...some good ol' boys might find themselves wondering what happened to their local economies if they prevail too, but then again, maybe not. For them, lily-white is just alright. Even if it's at $5.15 an hour.

What a shame that the slime molds holding the reigns of power in this country right now have no idea what sunshine is.

Switching course on one of his most controversial anti-terrorism policies, President Bush agreed yesterday to submit the administration's warrantless surveillance program to a court for constitutional review.

A deal negotiated between the White House and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) came with conditions. Bush is insisting that Congress first give him new leeway in some areas of surveillance and that all lawsuits challenging his eavesdropping policy be funneled to a Washington-based intelligence court that operates in secret.

A court that oversees this should be one that was constituted as the Founders envisioned under the 4th Amendment. I think that a federal judge could keep his mouth shut about properly constituted intelligence matters. It would be the improper ones that he would quite properly speak out about.

Thomas Jefferson takes another spin in his grave every time Bunnypants opens his pie-hole.

Given this precedent, when the Democrats seize the reigns of power again what are all these enablers of Beloved Leader going to say when, hypothetically Hillary Clinton does the same thing? How loudly will they be honking in the well of the Senate about a similar move by a Democrat? Loud and long, I suspect and they won't have fucking leg to stand on. Ever.

This just speaks absolute volumes about the power of corruption and special interests in a whole new way.

A Homeland Security database of vulnerable terror targets in the United States, which includes an insect zoo but not the Statue of Liberty, is too flawed to determine allocation of federal security funds, the department's internal watchdog found.
...
the department's database of vulnerable critical infrastructure and key resources included an insect zoo, a bourbon festival, a bean fest and a kangaroo conservation center. They represent examples of key assets identified in Florida, Illinois, Indiana, and Maryland.
...
The report noted that Indiana has 8,591 assets listed in the database -- more than any other state and 50 percent more than New York.

Daniels's name was mentioned as being involved in the insertion of the "Midnight Rider" of the Homeland Security Act which was signed into law on November 25, 2002. The bill contained a provision that was added at the last minute that would block lawsuits against Eli Lilly and Company over the production of a controversial vaccine preservative called "thimerosal" which is 49.6% mercury. Parents of autistic children claim this preservative has caused autism in thousands of children.
...
In January 2001, Daniels accepted President George W. Bush's invitation to serve as director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). He served as Director from January 2001 through June 2003. In this role he was also a member of the National Security Council and the Homeland Security Council.

Have you ever been to Indiana? It's a nice enough place, but Gary is hardly Manhattan, and the life of Bossie the Cow is hardly worth the life of an urban resident. It's not fair to say that Indiana is not worthy of protection, nor funding, but in the reality based world, they'd be considered on reality-based criteria, not whether their governor is a crony of the Preznit.

Yeah, more evidence that the grown-ups are in charge.

The christofascists have succeeded in bullying the FCC (not that it took much) into taking the next step in defining the New Nanny State. The FCC is now apparently going after live broadcasts where someone uses a bad word from the crowd/audience because you know, no one has ever hear those seven little words before. Ever.

In its continuing crackdown on on-air profanity, the FCC has requested numerous tapes from broadcasters that might include vulgar remarks from unruly spectators, coaches and athletes at live sporting events, industry sources said.

Tapes requested by the commission include live broadcasts of football games and NASCAR races where the participants or the crowds let loose with an expletive. While commission officials refused to talk about its requests, one broadcast company executive said the commission had asked for 30 tapes of live sports and news programs.
...
“I don’t know how they are going to rule, but they asked us for tapes with a specific emphasis on crowd noise,” said another TV executive, who also requested anonymity. “If some bozo in the crowd calls the ref an a--hole, the commission is asking for a copy of the tape.”

I'm guessing that protesting outside the FCC headquarters playing Eminem might not get any news coverage, but I'm just guessing here.

Well, I was going to write "CheneyBurton Fails", but that's been self-evident from the beginning of their no-bid love-affair with the 1600 Crew. Now it seems, even the Army, slow institutional entity that it is has finally had enough CheneyBurton.

The Army is discontinuing a controversial multibillion-dollar deal with oil services giant Halliburton Co. to provide logistical support to U.S. troops worldwide, a decision that could cut deeply into the firm's dominance of government contracting in Iraq.
...
Under the deal, Halliburton had exclusive rights to provide the military with a wide range of work that included keeping soldiers around the world fed, sheltered and in communication with friends and family back home. Government audits turned up more than $1 billion in questionable costs. Whistle-blowers told how the company charged $45 per case of soda, double-billed on meals and allowed troops to bathe in contaminated water.

alliburton officials have denied the allegations strenuously.

The real kicker here is this:

"The Iraq reconstruction is winding down . . . so there is no need for new contracts to replace the existing," Foster said.

Instead, the Iraqi government will have to find its own contractors to do the work, which includes tackling a large number of projects left undone by the United States.

"This is the year of transition for Iraqi reconstruction. The U.S.-funded projects are being completed and transferred to Iraqi management and control," said James Mitchell, spokesman for the inspector general's office.

That office has repeatedly warned of a "reconstruction gap" between what the United States promised in rebuilding the country after the spring 2003 invasion and what it has delivered. For instance, a contract aimed at building 142 new health centers across Iraq instead produced 20 before the program ran out of money.

Oh, and if you wanted to know...

No contractor has received more money as a result of the invasion of Iraq than Halliburton, whose former chief executive is Vice President Cheney.

Non-Outrage du jour (i.e. bidness as usual in Bunnypants America), republican congressman Peter Hoekstra is mad because whistleblowers informed him that the 1600 Crew had made an end-run around congressional oversight in intelligence matters. I'm shocked! There's gambling at Rick's!

Mr Hoekstra said his intelligence committee learned about some undisclosed operations from whistleblowers who alerted Congress to what they believed were illegal activities.

This led to Mr Hoesktra writing an angry letter to Mr Bush reminding the President of his legal responsibility to "fully and currently" inform Congress of intelligence operations.

"If these allegations are true, they may represent a breach of responsibility by the administration, a violation of law, and, just as importantly, a direct affront to me and the members of this committee who have ardently supported efforts to collect information on our enemies," Mr Hoekstra wrote.

I'm wondering if Hoekstra will have "come to Karl" meeting concerning his upcoming reelection bid on his schedule this week...be interesting to know. Love to hear the conversation...

Yeah, it was almost inevitable. As the demand for boots in Mess O'Potamia increased, so too did the demand for fresh new faces to fill them. Clearly, the Yellow Elephant Class were not/are not going to fill them, they're too busy "fighting the war of ideas" here at home, not to mention staying in those well-paid Wingnut Think-tank jobs, all safe and secure.

So what's happened? Apparently recruits who might not normally make it out of basic training are finding their way into the field as fully-trained infantrymen. Recruits whose allegiance is perhaps to their unit for the time being, but might also be to such organizations as the Aryan Nations or the Crips...in short, not the kind of folks we want our tax dollars training in Urban Combat with weapons of small-scale destruction.

The military (and I thought I had written on this before) went through some serious convulsions with respect to race, and race relations back in the early 70s. The story of the Navy and its troubles and eventual salvation are the one I'm most familiar with, having lived through a good part of it first hand.

A couple of incidents at sea, most prominently aboard USS Kitty Hawk and USS Constellation (you can read the congressional report and narrative here) focused the attention of the entire Navy, and one man in particular, Admiral Elmo Zumwalt on the issues surrounding race relations and it's importance to the command structure and the entire US Navy. Zumwalt was hated by most of the senior enlisted and senior officers of the early 70s Navy, with a passion. But he stepped up and did what needed to be done to help move the Navy from a very autocratic, racially divided service to one where the individual contributions of every sailor were valued. The shift in mindset that he propagated are still in force today, and have made the Navy a pretty damn great organization.

So what's up with the Army? Well, my understanding is that they followed the best they could, and made an effort to crawl out of the same hole that their sister service was in with respect to race relations. I don't know that they were ever as successful, because "little" incidents kept happening, like this one a few years ago at FT Bragg. I don't believe that there's less of a "zero tolerance" attitude among the more senior leadership, at least at the "lip service" level, but in the field, I have to wonde if a go-along get-along attitude doesn't prevail. After all, an infantry unit is not a subject to the confinement and closeness of a shipboard environment 24/7 for literally months on end. Although in Iraq it's probably pretty similar, there is not much in the way of "off base" activities for most combat units beside their daily patrols for IEDs and such. So unit cohesion and morale is important there, will that be a place where the first breaks along racial lines occur, if they do as happened aboard those carriers in the early 70s?

It'll bear watching to see how the Army handles this, now that there has been some publicity about it. I'd like to think that most soldiers, if approached by a fellow soldier about joining an organization whose goals are overtly not compatible with DoD policy like some of those mentioned would decline and report the "recruiter" to his or her chain of command. Sadly, I doubt that's going to happen. Go-along/get-along is going to kick in, and the activity will continue elsewhere.

Bottom-line: are recruiters actively seeking these folks out? No, I don't think so. They are being pressured to "make goal", and their alternative to not "making goal" is probably being ripped from their current stateside tour and being sent back overseas, whether to Iraq or not, they'll be sent away from the Army version of "shore duty", and if you just got back it's a no-brainer that any warm body that keeps those PCS orders from arriving in your in-box is a good warm body.

Back in a day or two. Sorry for the interruption, the fun will continue after the weekend.

Enjoy your weekend!

Apparently a list of Swift Boat Veterans was left in a comment in August 2004 by a commenter who no longer visits these pages anymore. It languished there for almost two years unread, and unnoticed by anyone until some enterprising soul found it and said list made its way to the Huffington Post (comments, apparently).

A right-wing blogger has made it his quest to have me remove the list (which in all honesty I had not even remembered being there) or he is threatening to out me and my family. Well, I am not a big fan of outing anyone for any reason. The Swift Boat folks have their right to speak, as do I and Mr. Stogie Chomper, and they don't deserve to be threatened for their political views, just as I don't nor does anyone else. Period.

Bottom line: I deleted those comments as soon as I found them off a link from The American Spectator. Had Mr. Stogie Chomper given me the link, they would have been gone sooner. Had anyone pointed it out, I probably would have deleted them long ago...anyone who is a long time reader will remember that once-upon-a-time, there was not comment moderation here and I'm guessing that list might have been posted back then, which is why I did not remember it.

I certainly would have like to have known before now that I was causing all these problems. I am only too happy to have deleted the information. I don't know where the commenter got it, but it seemed to have been off a list of some sort, it was pretty well organized.

List gone, problem solved, I hope. Never meant to be the cause of such bother and worry.

Peace.

Soldierly "misconduct" has been around for as long as there have been armies and wars for them to fight in. So it goes from the predecessors of the Centurions of Ancient Rome to the present day. And it never leads to good results. Try as they might, all the lawmakers and all those charged with maintaining "good order and discipline" can only do so much before something bad happens.

Well, it happened at Abu Ghraib, and now it's just getting worse.

The U.S. Army is investigating allegations that American soldiers raped and killed a woman and killed three of her family members in a town south of Baghdad, then reported the incident as an insurgent attack, a military official said Friday.

The alleged crimes occurred in March in the insurgent hotbed of Mahmudiyah. The four soldiers involved, from the 502nd Infantry Regiment, attempted to burn the family's home to the ground and blamed insurgents for the carnage, according to a military official familiar with the investigation, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was providing details not released publicly.

The men who are involved in this need to be brought before the bar, no question. But when are the men who caused this to happen going to answer? The war-mongering chickenhawks who basically whispered in the ears of the troops that Iraq was responsible for 9/11, go get some payback fomented this as surely as if they had been there doing the raping and killing. The dehuminization of the Iraqis as "hajis", and the building mistrust and anti-American sentiment are a natural outgrowth of the lack of foresight and planning that the 1600 Crew is known for a half-decade into their mismanagement of America.

When these men go before a military judge, so should Beloved Leader, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove, Wolfowitz, Pearle and Powell and explain why they should not be dragged before a military tribunal and charged with violations of federal and military law for crimes against the Constitution and our Nation. Well, I won't hold my breath, but it sure would be good theatre, wouldn't it?

1. Michael Ledeen
   
2. Talking Points redux
   
3. Brilliant Froomkin
   
4. Delay'd?
   
5. More fun with the Presser Quotes
   
6. Same Song
   
7. Stupid like him
   
8. Send this to Peter Beinert
   
9. More economic goodness
   
10. An Ultimate Flip-Flop?