No tears from me for Saddam. But his death was not worth the life of a single American service man or woman. Sorry. It just wasn't.

I realize that Preznit Six-Shooter had to get his war on, and that he was aided and abetted by all manner of folks who were either ideologically aligned with the Neo-Con doctrine of "We're Number One!" or were being WarFloggers to make a buck or a million off the drive to oust Saddam. But at the end of the day, the overthrow of Saddam and the sale of purple ink to whatever passes for the Federal Elections Commission in Iraq is pretty meaningless.

As the death toll inevitably climbs higher, the execution of Hussein becomes less meaningful in a historical context except as a means to martyr him to the Sunni Arab world. They might not have loved Saddam, but he was one of them. Oh, and did I mention that Sunni's are the largest sect of Islam outside of Iraq? No? Well, consider that for a moment.

If the revisionists in the 1600 Crew write their final chapter to their self-perceived righteous invasion of Iraq, they will probably have the Decidering Wrecks-All Wrangler-in-Chief going over there to personally shoot Saddam with the captured six-shooter he displays in the Oval Office with the delight of a child with a shiny toy.

Now kids, THAT'S show business.

Every year on January 1st, we start off with the hope that what's to come will be better than what's happened.

In FantasyLand errr... the 1600 Crew they are defining new ways to stretch both logic and reason into the New Year. Preznit Empty Head's toady Frances Frago Townsend made a gen-u-winely Bushly statement recently:

Five years after the Sept. 11 attacks, Osama bin Laden is still at large -- but that's not a failure of White House policy, says Frances Fragos Townsend.

HENRY: You know, going back to September 2001, the president said, dead or alive, we're going to get him. Still don't have him. I know you are saying there's successes on the war on terror, and there have been. That's a failure.

TOWNSEND: Well, I'm not sure -- it's a success that hasn't occurred yet. I don't know that I view that as a failure.

War going badly? Blame the media.
Americans not onboard with the direction of the country? Blame the Democrats.
Popularity in the dumper? Again, the media whipping-boy strawman.

Can't find Osama? Well that's a success that just hasn't occured yet.

You know, so is my winning the lottery. But at least I'll admit that's in the realm of fantasy. Right up there with having a five-way with the Swedish Bikini Team for life.

Really, what is it with these republicans ... they are all coming out against the headstrong, Inerrant Boy-King now that they no longer have to worry about their J.O.B.S. Fuck this shit. First it's My Lai Powell recanting his participation the whole first four year of L'Affaire Bunnypants as SecState. Now it's Presidente Ford (yes, he's still dead) from an "embargoed" interview:

Former president Gerald R. Ford said in an embargoed interview in July 2004 that the Iraq war was not justified. "I don't think I would have gone to war," he said a little more than a year after President Bush had launched the invasion advocated and carried out by prominent veterans of Ford's own administration.

In a four-hour conversation at his house in Beaver Creek, Colo., Ford "very strongly" disagreed with the current president's justifications for invading Iraq and said he would have pushed alternatives, such as sanctions, much more vigorously. In the tape-recorded interview, Ford was critical not only of Bush but also of Vice President Cheney -- Ford's White House chief of staff -- and then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who served as Ford's chief of staff and then his Pentagon chief.

Seems like it to me. I guess that's all part of being a "Good" American. Suck it up and ask for more. From the Lying Cocksucking Weasels who are destroying the Country. Yeah, that's being a Real American.

Nice work, guys. You can sing all the hosannahs you want about his essential goodness. His righteousness would have been set in concrete if he had not pardoned the Trickster and come out against the irrational (and destructive) policies of his own party pre-mortem.

James Brown has passed. A force in popular music an culture for decades has finally moved on. The world will be a poorer place for it, but he leaves a legacy of accomplishment that will last for as long as people tap their toes to his music, and in fact much of what derives from the funky, syncopated music he created.

James Brown, creator of "The One". Can ya dig it? I knew you could.

Oh, Gerald Ford died today. The accidental president who so badly wanted to put the scandal of Watergate behind him and his party, that he assured his reelection went into the dumper by midnight on September 8th, 1974 by signing the pardon of Tricky Dick.

Most Americans wanted to know how Nixon lied and decieved them; how he had orchestrated his criminal cover-up and obstruction of justice. How he had managed to direct the metasticiztion of the cancer on the presidency from the Oval Office. But Ford cut that off, before the facts came out. He could have let a trial take place, let the facts become public, let the American people see what shitty things were being done in their name by an Imperial President. Then he could have pardoned the son of a bitch. He'd have looked magnanimous, positively Presidential. But he didn't.

Ford's lackeys at the time included one Donald Rumsfeld and one Dick Cheney. Perhaps the public trial of Dick Nixon might have discouraged them from their shenanagins of later years. Perhaps not, but we'll never know.

So rest in peace, Jerry Ford. I'll always think of you as played by Chevy Chase on SNL trimming the tree at Christmas, falling off the ladder. I'll always remember that had you let the trial of The Trickster go forward you might have changed the American electorate's perceptions of the accountability of politicians and also changed the behavior of politicians who understood that people knew they could be held accountable in the end.

But you didn't, and that's your legacy. What a shame.

Oh me, oh my. I can't wait for the new Congress to be seated. I can't wait for the new chairmen, especially Henry Waxman to start holding hearings and issuing subpoenas. Pass the fracking popcorn, bay-bee ... it's gonna be a show! What the rubber-stamp republicans who manifestly claimed to support our troops, and put the beat-down on anyone not deemed sufficiently "Patriotic" by their standards managed to ignore will be fodder for the next twenty years, if the Democrats play this right.

In one instance, Interior officials bought armor to reinforce Army vehicles from a software maker.

Bunnatine (Bunny) H. Greenhouse is a former chief contracting officer (Principal Assistant Responsible for Contracting (PARC)) of the United States Army Corps of Engineers. On June 27, 2005, she testified to a Democratic Party public committee, alleging specific instances of waste, fraud, and other abuses and irregularities by Halliburton with regard to its operations in Iraq since the Iraq War. She described one of the Halliburton contracts (secret, no-bid contracts awarded to Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR)—a subsidiary of Halliburton) as "the most blatant and improper contract abuse I have witnessed during the course of my professional career."

A long-time government employee, Greenhouse was hired by Lieutenant General Joe Ballard in 1997 to oversee contracts at the Army Corps of Engineers. After Ballard retired in 2000, Greenhouse's performance reviews, which had been exemplary throughout her public career, suddenly soured. Greenhouse filed an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) complaint alleging race and gender discrimination, which her attorney states has never been investigated. In August 2005, she was demoted in what her lawyer called an "obvious reprisal" for her revelations about the Halliburton contracts.

I like my popcorn with just a bit of salt and a bit of real butter ... it's better that way. I figure if I'm gonna die of sodium and fat while watching investigations of the corrupt motherfuckers who were ruining our country while enriching themselves, I'm dying happy.

Some day the Kewl Kidz (aka, the Beltway Moronic Fuckwit Punditry) will finally realize that we the people are better served by someone who is a moderately good communicator, is slightly square socially, and may not be their choice of Prom Date for the Correspondant's dinner.

Because their love affair with the Preznit Empty Hear has served no one well. Once again, John Kerry hits the nail on the head:

I say this to President Bush as someone who learned the hard way how embracing the world's complexity can be twisted into a crude political shorthand. Barbed words can make for great politics. But with U.S. troops in Iraq in the middle of an escalating civil war, this is no time for politics. Refusing to change course for fear of the political fallout is not only dangerous -- it is immoral.

I'd rather explain a change of position any day than look a parent in the eye and tell them that their son or daughter had to die so that a broken policy could live.

I don't think I could live with the heartbreak of John Kerry getting savaged by the Kewl Kidz again, but I'll damn sure bet you that he'd have more respect for, and be more respected by anyone in uniform today than the Empty Suit who struts around calling himself the Decider and relishes using the troops he doesn't give a shit about as backdrops and showpieces for his bullshit speeches.

You have to wonder how many of the more senior folks in the military today are finally beginning to believe that Junior went AWOL, as we all said. He's not officer material, much less fit to be where he is.

And thousands have paid the price for that mistake.

Hey, for those of you who stop by over the next day or two, and those who don't... Happy War-on-any-Xtian-Judeo-Islamofascist-Idol-in-straw-worshipping- celebration you may observe!

And peace be upon all of us. Because that's the only way we'll all survive.

Jo and the happy band of campers at DV.

In my Fantasy Agenda for the second hundred hours of change by the Democrats would be the utter dismantaling of the TSA. They are good for absolutely nothing. Watch them at the airports sometimes, the good ones are really good, and the bad ones are worse than just bad ... someone gave them a wee bit too much authority. But that's not the real reason for dumping or reshaping the agency, this is:

Secure Flight, the U.S. government's stalled program to screen domestic air passengers against terrorism watch lists, violated federal law during a crucial test phase, according to a report to be issued today by the Homeland Security Department's privacy office.

The agency found that by gathering passenger data from commercial brokers in 2004 without notifying the passengers, the program violated a 1974 Privacy Act requirement that the public be made aware of any changes in a federal program that affects the privacy of U.S. citizens. "As ultimately implemented, the commercial data test conducted in connection with the Secure Flight program testing did not match [the Transportation Security Administration's] public announcements," the report states.

In the days following 9/11, too many people were willing to give up too much to the faceless authoritarians who promised security and tranquility at a price. The price, as it turns out has been lawlessness and malfeasance run rampant on our Constitution and populace.

Time to end it, and end it now.

Oh, and did I mention that the TSA has lost over 3,700 badges and uniforms in the last few years. None, I am sure, made their way to someone who might be an Al-Qaeda member, or who plays one on TV.

Oh, and right after TSA, their parent agency DHS ought to be next on the block. That's a bureacracy that can't couldn't get out of it's own way to do anyhthing. Example: Katrina. Discuss among yourselves.

From the Department of Legal Oddities, or as they might have said on the old "Fractured Fairytales" ... Only in Texas

In the middle of Joshua Bush's forehead, two inches above his eyes, lies the evidence that prosecutors say could send the teenager to prison for attempted murder: a 9 mm bullet, lodged just under the skin.

Prosecutors say it will prove that Bush, 17, tried to kill the owner of a used-car lot after a robbery in July. And they have obtained a search warrant to extract the slug.
...
Dr. Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, predicted Bush's rights as a patient will trump the state's desire to get the bullet, and said authorities might have a hard time finding someone willing to extract the slug.

"It truly is a moral quandary," Caplan said. "Doctors are caught between wanting to help solve crimes and their responsibility to patients' rights to refuse a procedure."

Tom Delay has a blog? Yeah, he does it seems...funny. Much.

He drew early attention to the blog with his prediction, made at a meeting with conservative activists to promote the Web site, that Hillary Rodham Clinton would be elected president in 2008 and would probably choose Senator Barack Obama of Illinois as her running mate. She would owe her victory, Mr. DeLay suggested, to liberal groups that had moved faster than their conservative counterparts to harness the power of the Internet.

"The blogosphere needs more conservatives," said Mr. DeLay, who sounded downright cheery in an interview this week as he described his plans to "fight in a different arena."

Maybe he can get Duke Cunningham to smuggle out daily posts in the paper airplanes he sends over the walls at the Butner Federal Corrections Facility (or where ever they're holding him now).

Delay meet Fork, Fork meet Delay. Done.

Back right before the invasion of Iraq, I wrote that there were probably going to be some atrocities that would occur, and that it was not all on the men and women of our military who committed them. The four Marines charged today in the Haditha murders were among those I had in mind at the time.

Could they have acquitted themselves more honorably? Absolutely. Could their leadership have been less blind to the rage that fueled their alleged killing spree? Absolutely.

Were they delivered into a cauldron by a bunch of whining Chickehawks who knew nothing of Combat but the TV show of the same name, who were handed the keys to the country out of fear and a hysteria that most of us now regret ever being allowed to run our lives? Absolutely.

So when I read this, I am sad. I am sad for the victims of the attack, I am sad for the Marines who will now stand trial and have their lives and careers taken from them.

I am mostly sad that we allowed ourselves to be led into a war by incompetants, opportunists and a lazy, arrogant boy-king whose biggest desire in life was to top the accomplishments of his father, and in doing so has ruined more lives, left more broken humans in his wake than any American leader in memory.

Responding to one of the most extreme cases of illegal civilian killings by the American troops in Iraq, the Marine Corps today charged four enlisted men with the murders of nearly two dozen people - including at least 10 women and children - in the village of Haditha last year.

"Support the Troops" was their mantra. Yeah, right.

Honestly, is there any reason we should care what Colin Powell thinks? About anything? Guess what ... he's against the escalation of troop levels in Iraq. Why gee, Herr General why do you care? You bear a huge amount of the burden for their being there in the first place, what with your willing complicity in the lies in the rush to let the draft-dodging chickehawks get their war on.

Now he's sorry, he's really sorry...

Powell's comments broke his long public silence on the issue and placed him at odds with the administration.
...

...But it's history that will judge the performance of all of us in this troubling time ...

For that he deserves to be excoriated when future generations look back on Mess O'Potamia. He was probably the one man in the US who could have stopped the invasion of Iraq if he's had the willpower and guts to be his own man... instead he played the good servant to the end, and is finally beginning to understand his mistake was being an enabler and not a fighter, if he ever was one.

You can't polish a turd, and that's exactly what's begun happening inside the beltway ... republicans who are afraid that they will be tagged with the shitty performance of the 1600 Crew into the next decade are trying their hardest to buff that turd that's Preznit Corn4Texture into something respectable. The once almost-honest Alan Simpson of Wyoming:

I think George W. Bush is a totally pragmatic politician," said former senator Alan K. Simpson (R-Wyo.), a member of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, which recommended a new course. "He's going to do outreach. . . . He is a total realist. He knows that the solid, march-in-step Republicans, at least in the House, are gone. . . . Now his legacy depends on the national interest, not partisanship."

The only legacy that Bunnypants will have is that the magnitude of his failure is of such monumental proportions, that it's hard to imagine repairing all his fuckups within the lifetime of Mary Cheney's baby.

It looks like I may be able to use Haloscan for comments, since commenting sits on their server, and not that of my ISP. We'll see how it goes.

Haloscan can be notorious for problems, but they do have a pretty fair degree of reliability, so we'll see how it all goes.

To paraphrase Ron Ziegler, "No previous comments are operative".

So, let's see how it works, shall we? I have enabled "moderation", so comments will not show up right away, I think. This may be a good thing, we'll see. I also don't know why it seems to think that there are no comments, when in fact there are. But I guess I'll solve that puzzle later. Happy commenting, if you are so inclined...

Thanks for your patience. Sorry 'bout all that... fucking spammers.

Note: I am going to try running without the moderation feature for a while. Play nice.

You know what? I'm a good Democrat, but shit like this just makes my blood boil. We did not work for change last month to have this shit go on.

In the wee hours of the morning Dec. 7, Senate negotiators rejected a Medicare measure pushed by outgoing House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) that would have meant big revenues for an insurance company in Hastert's home state. But a day later, the $100 million proposal was alive and well, paired with a plan for a major Nevada land swap backed by Sen. Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), the incoming Senate majority leader.

The leaders' dealmaking went on behind the scenes during the final, frenetic hours of the 109th Congress. Hastert's provision, which would give certain Medicare beneficiaries additional time to change their health-care coverage, and Reid's plan, which involves more than 900 square miles of federal land, were included in a massive tax and trade measure approved by Congress shortly before its final adjournment early last Saturday morning.

Both provisions have been criticized as potentially harmful to public interests. Land-use activists complained this week that Reid's provision would sell too much of the federal land to private developers and that it circumvents land-disposal procedures. Several senior senators objected to Hastert's provision on the floor of the Senate, saying it favored one type of Medicare plan over others. Representatives of Aon Corp., an insurance company based in Hastert's home state, lobbied for the provision.

Knock that shit off, Harry. You're on notice.

Yeah, it was that shining-city-on-the-hill thing, right? Proclaimed immediately after Preznit Idiot-on-a-Stick made his famous "They're not under here" video for the amusement of the Beltway Punditry.

Browsing the shelves of a cosmetics store in the Karrada shopping district, Zahra Khalid felt giddy at the sight of Alberto shampoo and Miss Rose eye shadow, blusher and powder.

Before leaving her house, she had covered her body in a billowing black abaya and wrapped a black head scarf around her thick brown hair. She had asked her brother to drive. She had done all the things that a woman living in Baghdad is supposed to do these days to avoid drawing attention to herself.

It was the first time she had left home in two months.

The failures of the 1600 Crew will be seen for generations in stories like this. Everything they touch, turns to shit. Everything they say is a lie.

Yeah, sorry Ev. We needed another DLC candidate in the primaries like the GOP needs another Ted Haggard (well, actually they do).

Less than two weeks after filing papers to set up an exploratory committee for a possible bid for the Democratic nomination in the 2008 presidential race, Sen. Evan Bayh has dropped out of the running.
...
Bayh was elected to the Senate in 1998 after serving as Indiana's governor. He is also a former leader of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council.

Don't let the door make a mark on your ass there, Ev. See ya.

Yes, it's been a few days since I last posted. Sorry for the interruption in service (if you missed me at all) ...

It's been quite the smorgasbord of repubican malfeasance out there, hasn't it? I worried about Bill "Video Doctor" Frist heading over to see Senator Tim Johnson after his surgery, what with the Democratic majority literally hanging by a blood vessel.

"The Lege" in the Great State of Tex-ass has proposed a law to allow blind hunters to use firearms to hunt.

This week, Seguin’s state legislator is getting some uncommon attention from around the world with a bill he hopes would improve access to the sport of hunting — and to the woods — for blind Texans.

District 44 State Rep. Edmund Kuempel has introduced proposed legislation in House Bill 308 that would allow the legally blind to use a laser or “red dot” hunting scope with a spotter to hunt deer and other game.

The visually impaired can — and do — legally hunt in Texas as elsewhere in season and with the aid of spotters. Kuempel said he wants to make the sport more accessible to the blind and safer for them.

Preznit BunnyPants is not a good man, by the definition of Lynne "I teabagged the son-of-a-bitch and all I got was this really expensive scarf" Cheney. Apparently Beloved Preznit has congratulated Mary Cheney on her impending republican (is it genetic?), bets are being taken as to whether like it's mother it will come out filled with self-loathing and go to work for the destruction of it's own self-identity after departing the womb. The Talibangelical Heads are exploding across the known universe.

Responding to a question about his 2005 comment that "a child is raised in a married family with a man and a woman", the President said that the Vice President's openly gay daughter is going to be "a loving soul to her child".

"The Vice President took me aside and gave me the good news. He and his wife, Lynne, are very happy for Mary," Bush said. "I think Mary is going to be a loving soul to her child. And I'm happy for her."

You gotta wonder if the Talibangelicals are finally starting to wonder if they got sold the proverbial "pig in a poke". At least with John Kerry, they knew where he stood, and they might have disagreed with most of what he said, but he wasn't lying about his positions to garner their votes, if he thought much about them at all.

Back with more mirth and merriment later...thanks for hanging in...

Just wanted to let you know, there are no more comments here for a while. Apparently, the site got hit pretty hard, and caused problems at my ISP, so I had to shut down the comments until further notice.

I hate that, because I like to hear from you all, but that' the way it is. I guess I need to look at something other than MT.

Back to our regularly scheduled rants tomorrow...it's too late to make fun of Bunnypants tonight.

Now that the "Report" has basically asked to find out if the light at the end of the tunnel is daylight or an on-coming train, I wonder how Holy Joe is feeling. Can't be too good... it looks like everyone but St. John is deserting him either out of principle, political calculation (Iraq is becoming the new Third Rail of politics) or retirement from public life.

If Holy Joe is on a talkshow for 15 minutes on a Sunday, and we call that a Lieberunit: 1 Lieberunit = .25 hours, how many Lieberunits until he repudiates his position and does a Rummy..."I was against the war before I was, you know, for it"..?

The Baker-Hamilton report aka "Cover my Ass with 168 pieces of Grade-A gov't certified paper" has an interesting cast of characters as authors doesn't it? Russ Feingold on Olbermann tonight made a really excellent point, that this report is totally "inside baseball" for the 1600 Crew because not a single member of the commission was ever opposed to the war in Iraq at any time. It is a report of "True Believers" assuaging their consciences over doing the wrong thing.

I also have to wonder how painful (if at all) this must have been for Sandra Day O'Connor. Had she voted to support the law in 2000*, there would have been no Iraqi War, there would have been no 2,800-plus American servicemen and women and countless Iraqis dead, our debt for this war would not be pushed into generations unseeable. No, Ms O'Connor put party and politics before country. I wonder how she felt getting figuratively slapped in the face every day she had to see what she wrought by selecting her man for her party as she sat on the commission and heard testimony and read the classified reports of how fucked up her boy has made this mess.

Too bad, Ms O'Connor, I hope it brings the consequences of your decision home in a way that nothing else would have. The blood of many is on your hands for your allegiance to party not principle and the rule of law.

***Update and correction
Why I need an editor -- observant and wise reader Marcel caught an error in this post that I missed. I had put 1999 instead of 2000 for the Bush v Gore court case without realizing it. Thanks Marcel. You rock!

Once upon a time, I used to actually respect Michael Kinsley in that weird sort of "hey, he's a likeable nerd" kind of way. But he seems to have drifted, like many pundits do, into trying to maintain his Kewl Kidz Klubkard by writing sophomoric crap like Broder and Will. I guess it's all part of "paying your Kewl Kidz Duez".

He manages to continue the "Webb was mean to Bunnypants" line in todays post:

Webb seems to believe that because he served in Vietnam, anyone who could have but didn't should shut up. That includes people who opposed that war -- that is, who got it right -- as well as those who supported it. ... Webb avoided the receiving line and then, when Bush came up and asked him how his son was doing, he basically told the president to flake off. Webb's self-righteousness can be obnoxious. ...

I guess he missed the backstory from Jim Moran of Virginia that Beloved Leaders handlers told the Deciderer to tread carefully around Webb in discussing his son. Said son having just been up-close-and-personal to an IED that killed three of his buddies. He also misses the fact that Webb was responding to Bunnypants being an asshole with his "that's not what I asked you" comment, so Mikey, do we all now kiss the ring of the the Royal Idiot?

Kinsley has fallen a long way over the years in his quest to be a Kewl Kid. This is just more evidence of decline. I wonder when we are going to get the Concern Troll column from him "I used to be Democrat, until they elected Nancy Pelosi as Speaker..."

I will give him pointz for at least calling out Jenna and Not-Jenna on their emulation of their parents "give a shit" attitude about the suffering and dying of young Americans sent to fight in a War of Choice started by their brain-dead father.

This is almost poetic justice. I guess now that the republican party has been sent to the minority in both houses of congress, it's time for the minor winguts with Delusions of Grandeur to step forth. Case in Point: Sam Brownback of Kansas (what's the matter with Kansas...? Progressive Governor, asshat Senators).

Republican Sen. Sam Brownback, a favorite of the religious right, said Monday he is taking the first step toward launching a bid for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination.

A vigorous abortion opponent, the Kansas senator pledged to make "issues of life," fiscal restraint and tax reform key components of his effort to woo supporters.

Apart from McCain and Giuliani, other potential GOP contenders for the White House include Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, Gov. George Pataki of New York, Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, Rep. Duncan Hunter of California and former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson.

Know what? Not interested. I don't think it's going to offer anything more than cover for an idiot president, and the enablers in Congress and his administration who should have been monitoring and overseeing this mess from it's misbegotten inception to it's unseemly demise.

The "bi-partisan" report is already being discounted by the man who consults his "higher father" in matters of foreign policy. His Deciderness has already made up his two petulant brain-cells that he's gonna stay even if Laura and Barney are his only supporters. He's resolute, after all.

So all the spin and other hype aside, there will be no good outcome from the whole thing. Yet another 'plan' consigned to the trash heap of history by the Decider and his sycophantic minions. After all, accepting the premise of the report is admitting that the whole Excellent Adventure has been a colosally mis-managed fuck-up. And that's just na ga ha pen (apologies to Atrios).

I'm guessing that when the 110th Congress is seated in about a month, they're going to have a tough road beginning the long, slow task of oversight. I'm sure that the machinery is already being dusted off by guys like Charlie Rangel, Henry Waxman and John Conyers, their staffs are probably looking at who gets first shot at the committee rooms with the best C-SPAN access, not for grandstanding (although, I'm sure the showboats like Biden in the Senate will come out), but for making sure that the total lack of oversight by the Rubber-Stamp Republicans is emphasized as being a reason for the current utter chaos in government.

Case in point. Heckuva-job FEMA just got bitch-slapped by a federal judger for being going places Ebenezer Scrooge only dreamed of. If it were up to FEMA to toss people in debtors prison, they'd probably make a note in the Federal Register, and open the first prison next year. But I digress...the administrator of FEMA is already sending a bit "fuck you" to Congress over the issue of their treatment of poor people (you know, the ones they discovered lived in New Orleans, then ignored).

Bush administration defenders see good news in the drop. Those still receiving aid were most dependent before Katrina, mostly single mothers on welfare, while the rest are back on their feet, said Ronald D. Utt, senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank.

"From a human suffering point of view, I think it's good news," Utt said. Even for lower-income people who would struggle to pay higher rents in New Orleans while looking for work, he said, "a lot of people have simply found it easier to stay where they are, which are probably places of greater opportunity than New Orleans."

"They're underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them"

So, Mr. Paulinson, Heckuva-job Brownie's successor then tosses the gauntlet down to Congress...

But, he also said: "We have to resist the call for additional investigations unless they're based on new evidence and allegations. Rather than conduct additional studies, inquiries, analysis that look backward and tell us what we really already know, we should continue to focus on correcting the problems."

I'm gonna be loving my DVR this year. If there is a move to impeach, it'll be for high crimes and misdemeanors uncovered in the course of regular oversight. It won't be sexy and it probably won't even make the news when it comes to light, but remember, Al Capone went down for income taxes not murder.

Pass the popcorn, baby.

The leaked "memo for the record" written by Rummy in perhaps his early McNamara moment (because he's so fucking old that by the time he has the "McNamara moment" of sort-of-remorse that McNamara had, he'll have been dead and gone for probably 15 years, or be a drooling idiot like ala Grampaw Simpson) is a real gem.

More of his vaunted "transformational thinking":

...He called for reaching out to U.S. military retirees and reservists to "aggressively beef up" Iraqi ministries, adding, "i.e. give up on trying to get other USG Departments to do it."

Similarly, he called for a "massive program for unemployed youth" but said it would have to be run by U.S. forces, "since no other organization could do it."

Self-serving and delusional indeed. I guess that no one told Rumsfeld that you go to war with the military you have. Until you use them up.

Asshole.

Ah, Punkin'haid don't disappoint, that's fer sher. Watching Press the Meet this morning, and Steven Hadley (R-Neocon Liar) was on blabbing about Iraq. Not having the transcript (and yes, I'll update this when I have it) he said that the situation in Iraq would have been different if they had had 150,000 to 200,000 Iraqi troops to help stablize the security situation after "Mission Accomplished". Of course, Mr. Hadley is from the Department of Rewriting History, Inc. a wholly-owned subsidiary of the 1600 Crew. What part of His Imperial Demi-Godness Jerry Bremer's ill-advised order dissolving the Iraqi Army with the blessing and encouragement of every Neocon from Beloved Leader to Doug Feith does he not remember?

Timmeh did not challenge the assertion that the the "Iraqi Army just melted away".

Timmeh is an idiot, shill and deserves the scorn of left blogtopia. And he proved why once again. Nice one, Timmeh. Soft Balls, much?

****UPDATE***
The MTP transcript is up. Here's the exchange:

MR. RUSSERT: How about troop levels?

MR. HADLEY: He's, he's acknowledged that, that in terms of troops we need to be building Iraqi forces to provide greater security. You know, Tim, people forget that, that we had hoped to have 150,000 to 200,000 Iraqi army forces to help in the security proposition, and those forces melted away at the close of the war. ...

As American forces advanced, regular Iraqi soldiers abandoned their arms and ran away in droves. Yet in one of his first orders as the American overseer of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer disbanded the entire Iraqi army.

Bremer's order deprived U.S. commanders of men they'd planned to recall to help keep order and secure Iraq's borders. It compounded the problems created by the Bush administration's failure to plan for securing Iraq and its mistaken estimate of how many American troops it would take to do that. It threw legions of angry, defeated Iraqis out of work, handed the budding anti-U.S. insurgency a recruiting windfall and fueled suspicions that America had come not to liberate Iraq, but to seize its oil.

The May 23, 2003, order was one of a succession of postwar American blunders that squandered a spectacular military victory and plunged the United States into a grinding guerrilla war at the head of the Persian Gulf and in the heart of the Islamic world.

Reportering is sooo hard, Timmeh. I know that's why no follow-up to such an obvious revisionist lie was forthcoming. Especially with your tongue so firmly in Hadley's ass.

You don't need to look very far to see the active workings of the right-wing noise machine at full volume. Following the well-reported exchange the other day where Preznit Yellow Stripe tried to make small talk with Jim Webb, the right-wingnuts are having a hissy fit because Webb did not bend over and lick the shoes of the deserter.

On top of that, George Will writes the "Disrespectful Democrat" column in the Washington Post, and selectively chooses what was reported to have been said, to make Webb look like the asshole. Well, two assholes were uncovered, and both share the same first name. George.

Here's the exchange as reported by the actual news side of the paper that sends Will a paycheck:

"How's your boy?" Bush asked, referring to Webb's son, a Marine serving in Iraq.

"I'd like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President," Webb responded, echoing a campaign theme.

"That's not what I asked you," Bush said. "How's your boy?"

"That's between me and my boy, Mr. President," Webb said coldly,
...

So Will, not bothering to read the article (although he cites it), goes to work doing the republican thing, rewriting history:

Wednesday's Post reported that at a White House reception for newly elected members of Congress, Webb "tried to avoid President Bush," refusing to pass through the reception line or have his picture taken with the president. When Bush asked Webb, whose son is a Marine in Iraq, "How's your boy?" Webb replied, "I'd like to get them [sic] out of Iraq." When the president again asked "How's your boy?" Webb replied, "That's between me and my boy." Webb told The Post...

The long knives are out now in the new era of "bi-partisanship" that he republicans seem to want now that they are headed into the wilderness. The rules that they set up are now going to ensure that they are left without a voice, or that if they have a voice it will be that of the Kewl Kidz and hacks like George Will, David Broder and Tim Russert.

It would be nice if the one George was more careful and intellectually honest than the other, but apparently that's not to be. Interesting how we get two fools named George in one city and both are so full of themselves that they can never be wrong, isn't it?

Memo two Georges: Fuck with Webb at your peril. I think his capacity for suffering fools gladly is pretty low, and lower still as long as his son is in Iraq.

1. Saddam the Dead
   
2. Meet the New Year, Same as the Old Year
   
3. republican genetics or something?
   
4. R.I.P James Brown
   
5. Investigations! (sung to the tune of "Tradition" from "Fiddler")
   
6. John Kerry is right ... again
   
7. Happy Holly Daze, or Festivus for the Restuvus
   
8. The Transportation Insecurity Administration
   
9. What's in a name?
   
10. Teh Humor!!!