This is good. Thanks to Blogging of the President for the link.

From Dan Froomkin at the Post:

About 50 members of the White House press corps accepted President Bush's invitation last night to come over to his house in Crawford, eat his food, drink his booze, hang around the pool and schmooze with him -- while promising not to tell anyone what he said afterward.
...
Nevertheless, I'm told that several reporters expressed squeamishness about last night's event, particularly as the press-pool vans drove by antiwar protester Cindy Sheehan's "Camp Casey" site. And later, a small handful watched askance as the rest fawned over Bush, following him around in packs every time he moved.

Bought and Paid for with a hot dog and a cheap beer. We've long since established what they are, and now we know the price...

Ahhh, a new moniker for the Duchess of Dupont: Auntie Eugenix. Back from emulating his hero and taking that looooong vacation on his readers dime (pay for 12 months, get 11!), Auntie plays with Bells again.

And the fact that so many liberals are determined instead to prevent and stigmatize free research and debate on this subject is evidence ...

Oh wait, it's your Masturbation Object, Preznit Pickle Licker, whose goal is politicize all research and science, who hates "free research and debate" because well, it's just not very controllable...and sometimes makes his big donors look like big dicks.

Well, I'm glad to see that Vacation hasn't improved the old Eugenix brain much. Too much dope, or not enough?

So I was waiting for the VBen to publish his second installment in his Chickenhawk follies. And he doesn't disappoint.

Shorter VBen:

There's no way on the planet that a 100KT nuke could get me out of Hahvahd Law and Cambridge

He calls all dissent from the left "unAmerican" and especially those who call for the enlistment of Jenna and Not-Jenna. Because their sacrifice in the GWOT/GSAVE is in coming home from a drunken spree at 2AM not 4, and not buying any French designer couture.

VBen then says that

Deciding to enter the armed services isn't a choice the left understands, but it is a choice -- an honorable, brave, praiseworthy choice.

Oh, and Michael Moore? He's still fat.

You gotta read this, if you haven't already.

Every time the wound begins to heal at Ray and Diane Maida's house, something comes along to rub salt into it.

First came news that their son, Mark Maida, a 22-year-old Army sergeant, was killed in Iraq by a roadside bomb on May 26. Then, a week after his death, the Army gave only hours' notice that the body would be arriving at Gen. Mitchell International Airport in Milwaukee, forcing the grieving family into a frantic scramble to retrieve it for a funeral two days later.

Letters and packages to Mark from home arrived for a time almost daily, marked "Return to sender." Then a slow trickle of possessions arrived from Iraq and his unit's base at Fort Irwin, Calif. To top it off, despite repeated efforts, Army officials failed to provide details of Mark's death. More than two months later, the Maidas finally got the details of his death, not from the Army, but from the Washington Post.
...
For the Maidas, pain from the loss of their son has been compounded by countless snafus. Ray said an Army official even admitted, unofficially, that the Army lacked a proper protocol for dealing with the families of dead soldiers.
...
"They can take a $1 million missile and put it up some Iraqi's ass and they can't tell me what time my son's coming in?" Ray fumed. "This is why my son's dead, this total incompetence."
...
Mark and his fellow soldiers patrolled trouble spots, often looking for insurgents planting roadside bombs. Although Mark was trained as a gunner on a Bradley fighting vehicle, the soldiers typically traveled in Humvees, which insurgents have been remarkably successful in blowing up.

"He's in Iraq and he's serving and he's getting frustrated, frustrated at the incompetence of leadership," Ray said. "He didn't feel he was accomplishing what America was saying was being accomplished."

But he had a sense of obligation to his fellow soldiers that outweighed his aversion to the military.
...
If there's one thing that galls the Maidas, it's the endless parade of bumper sticker ribbons.

"Do you know what my government's not doing to support the troops?" Ray said. "I want people to know the lack of respect and the folly of 'We Support Our Troops.'"

Mark Maida was the kind of military guy I respected a lot, and there are lots and lots of them out there, men and women who don't necessarily love the military, but do truly support each other and their mission, however stupid and misguided it may be.

Even in peacetime, it was always a sort of wrenching experience to leave your unit, knowing that someone else would be picking up the sorties you would have flown, or the deployments you would not be making. It's just like that...unless of course you're an overprivileged son-of-a-bitch who can't be bothered to carry your share of the load...ever.

RIP, Mark Maida.

From the 1600 Crew press brief with not-Scotty, Trent 'Tuffy' Duffy:

As the President said on Tuesday, most of those he meets with express support for going forward in the way and the manner in which the President has laid out.

The day he leaves office, either at the next inaugural, or as a result of an impeachment and conviction following a shift in Congressional Politics (and don't believe for a minute that the subpoenas won't be flying fast and furiously if either chamber changes hands), you have to wonder what his life will be like when he discovers that almost 60% of Americans now think he's a blithering, fucking idiot. Impeachment and conviction would remove him from his bubble forthwith...no nothing from an ungrateful nation, ever again.

I guess mommy and Pickles will be tucking him in every night with a glass of warm scotch and prozac chaser...it'll be hard work, takin' care of the most reviled ex-Preznit in history...

Kitty-killer Fristy is feeling the wrath of the Professional Victims of the Right these days. All he had to do was open his southern-fried yap and say that stem-cells might have some intrinsic medical use and boom! he was solidly in the PVoR's sights.

An evangelical group has begun a weeklong advertising campaign in Iowa criticizing Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist for backing expanded embryonic stem cell research.
...
In the ad, which shows a photo of a smiling baby, an announcer says: "Senator Frist: we cannot save innocent lives by destroying them. Tell Senator Frist to stand with President Bush and oppose research that destroys human embryos."
...
In the ad, which shows a photo of a smiling baby, an announcer says: "Senator Frist: we cannot save innocent lives by destroying them. Tell Senator Frist to stand with President Bush and oppose research that destroys human embryos."

What would these bozos say if that little babys liver failed and embryonic stem cells allowed it to return to being a happy healthy baby? Would they rather hold up the corpse and say "well, at least no embroys were harmed in the death of this formerly living person". I'm pretty sure they would.

Feel sorry for Frist? Nahh. But it's nice to see him get the castigating he so richly deserves from his "own people".

From Media Matters, a quote from John "5 in da Noggin" Gibson:

GIBSON: Hey, everybody. It's John Gibson in for Bill O'Reilly. And uh, this hour threatens to be big trouble. Big, big, big, big, big trouble. Because this subject has been big trouble in this country since at least -- 1925? Wasn't that when the Scopes trial happened? Inherit the Wind [the play and film based on the Scopes trial], 1925? And we're still arguing about it, although the argument has transmogrified in a lot of ways and is something different. And it's probably not even fair to talk about the Scopes trial of 1925. When the ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union] found John Scopes and was able to challenge, uh, the teaching of Bible-based science in schools. Successfully. And ever since then, we've had science-based science in schools.

Just got home and fired up the internets to see whazzup. bouncing off the link from Atrios, I find this:

The American Legion, which has 2.7 million members, has declared war on antiwar protestors, and the media could be next. Speaking at its national convention in Honolulu, the group's national commander called for an end to all “public protests” and “media events” against the war, constitutional protections be damned.

"The American Legion will stand against anyone and any group that would demoralize our troops, or worse, endanger their lives by encouraging terrorists to continue their cowardly attacks against freedom-loving peoples," Thomas Cadmus, national commander, told delegates at the group's national convention in Honolulu.

The delegates vowed to use whatever means necessary to "ensure the united backing of the American people to support our troops and the global war on terrorism."

Cadmus explained, "No one respects the right to protest more than one who has fought for it, but we hope that Americans will present their views in correspondence to their elected officials rather than by public media events guaranteed to be picked up and used as tools of encouragement by our enemies…

Second, isn't threatening violence and creating fear among the populace, well, sort of Terroristic Behavior? I mean when this guy tells me, that he's going to "use whatever means necessary" to silence my and others First Amendment protected objections to this Neo-Con Fantasy War, is he planning to come to my house, burn it down and kill me and my family? Or maybe just something a little less direct, like having a sympathetic AL member who's in law enforcement, picking up my kids at school and taking them for a ride and calling me up and asking where the kids are, and I'd better shut the fuck up now.

I certainly don't think that anyone in the 1600 Crew will gainsay this guy. Not after Trent Duffy threatened the press corpse again yesterday with another "yer with us, or agin us". Members of the American Legion who think this thing is over the top and believe that this reflects poorly on the Legion and it's history and principles, will you speak out?

Will any Democrats and/or republicans in politics ditch their American Legion Membership immediately as repudiation for these remarks and do so publicly and with some fanfare to point out that this is as Un-American as it gets?

You know what, this all sounds like an irrational conspiracy rant, something my commenters and correspondants accuse me of with regularity. But I have one question: how did we get to this point today?

Happened to catch the video feed of the Codpiece speaking in Idaho (he was mentioning members of the Idaho Nat'l Guard)...he went through all his yadda-yadda about freedom, womens rights (what planet is he on again?), how the Iraqi Security Forces are "standing shoulder to shoulder with our troops as we "hunt down the terrrists" (not what I've been reading in emails from correspondants over there), and how 9/11 was a horribleeventsaddamhusseinwasabadmanwhosupportedterror.
Shorter Beloved Leader speech:

American Soldiers must to die to honor the others who have died before them in Iraq.

via Sadly, No!, from The Poor Man. This is so true and one of the funniest things I've read on the internets in a long time. The comments are priceless. I nominated my self for a chair too:

How many kitten pictures do I have to view to be the Chair of the Barrifs and Terriers Research Foundation at the Institute?

We'll have pictures of cuddly puppies on the wall, and listen to "Dark Side of the Moon" alot, and give out AOL 9.0 CDs to worthy employees in lieu of filthy lucre.

The editorial page of the Times while giving a fairly good rhetorical bitch-slapping to Beloved Leader manages to gloss over their part in the Iraq War with amazing dexterity. It's almost an act of prosaic auto-fellatio:

It took President Bush a long time to break his summer vacation and acknowledge the pain that the families of fallen soldiers are feeling as the death toll in Iraq continues to climb. When he did, in a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Utah this week, he said exactly the wrong thing. In an address that repeatedly invoked Sept. 11 - the day that terrorists who had no discernable connection whatsoever to Iraq attacked targets on American soil - Mr. Bush offered a new reason for staying the course: to keep faith with the men and women who have already died in the war.

"We owe them something," Mr. Bush said. "We will finish the task that they gave their lives for." It was, as the mother of one fallen National Guardsman said, an argument that "makes no sense." No one wants young men and women to die just because others have already made the ultimate sacrifice. The families of the dead do not want that, any more than they want to see more soldiers die because politicians cannot bear to admit that they sent American forces to war by mistake.

Most Americans believed that their country had invaded Iraq to eliminate weapons of mass destruction, but we know now that those weapons did not exist. If we had all known then what we know now, the invasion would have been stopped by a popular outcry, no matter what other motives the president and his advisers may have had. (my emphasis)

It's nice that the Times is finally saying that the emperor has no clothes, but that's an observation they should have been making with the same energy and commitment that they had to say...hmmm, I don't know, Whitewater...?

The Pentagram, that five-sided monument to Murphy's Law on the Potomac has done it again. They have allowed the BRAC, that post-cold-war brainchild of the Bush I and VP Crashcart to start to effectively strangle them. From the announced BRAC closings today:

The nine-member Base Closure and Realignment Commission also voted to shut major Army bases in Georgia and Michigan and to close nearly 400 Army Reserve and National Guard facilities in dozens of states.

Now figure that a vet who has done a tour or two in Iraq thinks all those same things, plus knowing that it's a weekend away from the family they just left for several years, on-and-off. Yeah, I'd say that the BRAC just did the Pentagon a big favor. Not.

So BRAC just saved a few bucks for the next round of tax cuts for the friends of the 1600 Crew...wowee. There's an old saying: One aw-shit wipes out 1000 atta-boys. And folks, here's proof positive...

A great op-ed on evolution and why ID is crap.

Last month a team of paleontologists announced that it had found several fossilized dinosaur embryos that were 190 million years old - some 90 million years older than any dinosaur embryos found so far. Those kinds of numbers are always a little daunting. Ever since I was a boy in a public elementary school in Iowa, I've been learning to face the eons and eons that are embedded in the universe around us.
...
It's been approximately 3.5 billion years since primeval life first originated on this planet. That is not an unimaginable number in itself, if you're thinking of simple, discrete units like dollars or grains of sand. But 3.5 billion years of biological history is different. All those years have really passed, moment by moment, one by one. They encompass an actual, already lived reality, encompassing all the lives of all the organisms that have come and gone in that time. That expanse of time defines the realm of biological possibility in which life in its extraordinary diversity has evolved. It is time that has allowed the making of us.
...
That is a lot to absorb and, not surprisingly, many people refuse to absorb it. Nearly every attack on evolution - whether it is called intelligent design or plain creationism, synonyms for the same faith-based rejection of evolution - ultimately requires a foreshortening of cosmological, geological and biological time.
...
Evolution is a robust theory, in the scientific sense, that has been tested and confirmed again and again. Intelligent design is not a theory at all, as scientists understand the word, but a well-financed political and religious campaign to muddy science. Its basic proposition - the intervention of a designer, a k a God - cannot be tested. It has no evidence to offer, and its assumptions that humans were divinely created are the same as its conclusions. Its objections to evolution are based on syllogistic reasoning and a highly selective treatment of the physical evidence.

Accepting the fact of evolution does not necessarily mean discarding a personal faith in God. But accepting intelligent design means discarding science. Much has been made of a 2004 poll showing that some 45 percent of Americans believe that the Earth - and humans with it - was created as described in the book of Genesis, and within the past 10,000 years. This isn't a triumph of faith. It's a failure of education. emphasis added

The public face of these blowhards is Pat Robertson, whose personal christian convictions include relying on the Ten Commandments only when it's time to raise money on the TeeVee, and favoring summary execution for those he personally dislikes..."Thou Shalt Not Kill" is for pussies and wimps, eh, Rev?

Robertson has been a driving force behind this movement to get Religion back into Government at every level, including and most especially public schools. Make no mistake about it, putting the face of someone like Robertson on ID is a good thing for us...it makes it harder for the any christo-fascists to differentiate themselves from the most radical elements in their brood. Robertson has thoughtfully supplied us with a "Spotted Owl" moment on Hugo Chavez...we need to use it for every battle. Just like they do.

Continuing his five week-long escape from reality, Beloved Leader again spoke of Cindy Sheehan.

President Bush suggested Tuesday that anti-war protesters such as Cindy Sheehan, who want the troops brought home immediately, do not represent the views of most U.S. military families and are "advocating a policy that would weaken the United States."

In brief remarks outside the exclusive resort where he is vacationing, Bush gave no indication that he would change his mind and meet with Sheehan, who lost a son in Iraq and has emerged as a harsh critic of the war there, when he returns to his Texas ranch Wednesday evening.
...
Bush said that two high-ranking member of his staff have already met with her.

Bush was asked about the possibility that objections to the constitution as it now stands from the Sunnis, the party of deposed leader Saddam Hussein, could trigger a civil war.

"The Sunnis have got to make a choice -- do they want to live in a society that's free?" Bush said.

I think that's the truth of the "Noble Cause" that the republican slime machine is afraid will be uttered by Preznit Strategery if he goes off-message by accident.

Kind of like this:

At an August 11, 1984 press conference, Reagan quipped during the microphone check: "My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes."

Holy Crap! I'm not alone!!! Was wandering around the blogroll this morning and from the lovely Susie Madrak over at Suburban Guerilla, I found this link to a blog called Pen and Sword, written by a guy I think I knew in the Training Command (flight school to everyone else).

Jeff, the guy who runs the blog is retired E-2C driver, and was the skipper of VAW-124. He retired as a Commander, and is now a part-time beltway bandito and plays with his dogs.

It's always nice to find another 131x out here in blogtopia! (y!sctp!). Welcome aboard, shipmate! You can find him over in the Fish Pond from this day forward...I get one more blogging 1310/1315/1320/1325 (Naval Aviator/Naval Flight Officer) or even an AEDO, and I'm starting another pond!

Wow. From todays WaPo on the predeliction of the Luxury-SUV class to have magnetic yellow ribbons on their vehicles, but avoid having to send their kiddies off for an 18-month vacation in Mess O'Potamia (shamelessly stolen from The Daily Show).

But the Post-Gazette raises another issue. There has been much talk about the relationship between race and ethnicity and military recruitment. But what about social and economic class? Are wealthier Americans, who are more likely to be Republicans and therefore more likely to support the war, stepping up to the plate and urging their children and others from their communities to enlist?

Unfortunately, there has been no definitive study on this subject. But it appears that the affluent are not encouraging their children and peers to join the war effort on the battlefield.

By looking at long-term trends, it seems logical that some of those most likely to support Bush and his Iraq policy are also those least likely to encourage their children to go into the military at wartime. And it raises questions, such as, if you are among those most likely to support the war, shouldn't you be among those most likely to encourage your child to serve in the military? Shouldn't your socioeconomic group be the most receptive to the recruiters' call? And would there be a recruitment problem at all if the affluent put their money where their mouth is?

Among the more recent studies was one done last year by Robert Cushing, a retired professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. He tracked those who died in Iraq by geography and found that whites from small, mostly poor, rural areas made up a disproportionately large percentage of the casualties in Iraq.
...
Back during Vietnam, "the top [economic class] had access for means of staying out of the military," said Segal. "The National Guard was known to be a well-to-do white man's club back then. People knew if you if joined the guard you weren't going to go to Vietnam. That included people like Dan Quayle and our current commander in chief. If you were rich, you might have found it easier to get a doctor to certify you as having a condition that precluded you from service. You could get a medical deferment with braces on your teeth, so you would go get braces -- something that was very expensive back then. The wealthy had more access to educational and occupational deferments."

Today's affluent merely see themselves as having more options and are not as enticed by financial incentives, such as money for college, Segal said.

Segal said that service members in the highest and lowest income brackets are underrepresented in the modern military. ...
...
While there have been changes in racial and ethnic enlistment trends, with the number of black recruits dropping precipitously since the Iraq war, Segal and Bachman said they've seen nothing to indicate significant changes in the class -- of which education levels is a prime indicator -- trends in the military.

Journalists can get themselves in trouble by drawing simplistic conclusions based on less-than-exhaustive research, and we won't do so here. But we can at least raise the question of whether the rich are more likely to support the war because their loved ones are less likely to die in it.

crossposted at Operation Yellow Elephant

The Washington Post has issued a correction. Which proves that the MSM is both archaic and consistently factually incorrect.

Gah.

Really.

The there's this post from Sadly, No! talking about giving Charles Johnson of Little Green Snotballs indigestion.

hat tip: Julia

Release the Hounds! Let the Balkinization Begin! In agreeing to agree in principle on the understanding of the principles of the draft of the understanding of the new constitution, the Shiites and the Kurds have really done it!

Shiites and Kurds were sending a draft constitution to parliament on Monday that would fundamentally change Iraq, transforming the country into a loose federation, with a weak central administration governed by Islamic law, negotiators said.

The draft, slated for action by a Monday deadline, would be a sweeping rejection of the demands of Iraq's disaffected Sunni minority, which has called the proposed federal system the start of the breakup of Iraq. Shiites and Kurds indicated they were in no mood to compromise.

Leaving out the other third of the population? Not a problem, why they're just acting like Preznit Swallow Not Spit, and ignoring everyone who doesn't agree with them. After all, what are the Sunni's going to do, fight?

Michael Crowley taking the reins from Josh over at TPM speculates.

It now looks increasingly likely that Hackett will run for Senate next year, against the vulnerable Republican incumbent Mike DeWine. This Cincinnati Post article has current details, including the decision by one top Ohio Democrat to skip the race and the signal from another that he probably won't run -- developments which appear to make Hackett the Dems' de facto candidate.

[big flashy blue light graphic thingy stolen by damn moonbats]

UPDATE!!----------------------------BREAKING---------------UPDATE!!
Patridiot Watch reads TPM too! it's not the same exact story, but he was there too today!

hat tip: Jesse

It's Blog Like a Conservative Day!

Nine-Eleven.
9/11
9-11
911
0911

Lest we forget. Now watch this invasion.

Why it's not working. Bob Herbert's column today talks about the tactics used by the military to try and fill the ranks for future deployments to Iraq and other places that the Bunnypants Brigade may want to wreak havoc on for no discernible reason. He finishes with this observation:

With a series of television ads, the Army is also trying to win over what it calls the "influencers," the parents and other adults who have been counseling youngsters to stay away from the military. That campaign was packaged by the Leo Burnett agency, which has the following to say about itself:

"Leo Burnett USA creates ideas that inspire enduring belief for many of the world's most valuable brands and most successful marketers, including McDonald's, Disney, Procter & Gamble, Marlboro, Altoids, Heinz, Kellogg, Nintendo and the U.S. Army."

Of course expecting "Truth in Recruiting" from the 1600 Crew is like expecting "Truth" about anything from them. Not gonna happen.

Yes, kids. It's reaching epidemic proportions of stupididity out there. The paper of record, lacking the good guidance of Judy (You go, Ho!) Miller to help with it's editorial guidance has led a story with this opening:

At the heart of the debate over intelligent design is this question: Can a scientific explanation of the history of life include the actions of an unseen higher being?

The proponents of intelligent design, a school of thought that some have argued should be taught alongside evolution in the nation's schools, say that the complexity and diversity of life go beyond what evolution can explain.
...
In one often-cited argument, Michael J. Behe, a professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University and a leading design theorist, compares complex biological phenomena like blood clotting to a mousetrap: Take away any one piece - the spring, the baseboard, the metal piece that snags the mouse - and the mousetrap stops being able to catch mice.

Well, talking about fecal matter, here's another frothy Ricky Santorum story.

On the evening of August 10, Hannah Shaffer of Glen Mills, Pennsylvania, decided to go to the nearby Barnes & Noble outside of Wilmington. She wanted to see Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, who was promoting his book, “It Takes a Family.”

The event was billed as a “book signing and discussion,” Shaffer says.

But discussion was the last thing that the Senator’s people wanted.

Shaffer, her friends, and two other young women were booted out of the store and threatened with imprisonment even before they had a chance to say a word to Santorum...

I'm actually surprised that Barnes and Noble management let this go on. I stopped shopping at Borders a couple of years ago after that shameful display in a Borders in Virginia where a musician was singing an anti-Beloved Leader ditty and was kicked out/silenced. Do I no longer shop at Barnes and Noble anymore either because their management is getting too cozy with the GOP and suppression of free speech too? Hope not.

Frist, a politician who can be swayed by any breeze more than five knots, has managed to make some interesting headlines backing that Genesis story in psuedo-scientific clothing: Intelligent Design. You know, the theory that that says that the Hairy Thunderer waved his magic wand and "BOOM" everything happened. Of course the Creationist-Dominioniist use somewhat more fancy words than "BOOM", but it all works out to the same thing. Nothing. BOOM. Everything.

So Fristy, who gets his diagnostic information on patients he writes midnight legislation for via heavily-edited video tapes has weighed in for Intelligent Design. Remember, he's already positioning himself for a bid to be elected Christo-Fascist of the Year for 2008.

"I think today a pluralistic society should have access to a broad range of fact, of science, including faith," Frist said.

Frist, a doctor who graduated from Harvard Medical School, said exposing children to both evolution and intelligent design "doesn't force any particular theory on anyone. I think in a pluralistic society that is the fairest way to go about education and training people for the future."

Harvard Med has to be somehwat embarrassed about this guy having one of their diplomas...

Quote of the day, from David Sirota on the congressional Democratic leadership in charge of electability:

...Apparently, the class of professional election losers in Washington, D.C. thinks Democrats can win by saying almost nothing on Iraq (like the party often says nothing on lots of issues, thus perpetuating the perception that Democrats stand for nothing).

Hey, Little Ricky's gotta be likin' this French Fry Guy muy mucho:

In 1985, he called a proposed memorial service for aborted fetuses organized by antiabortion doctors in California "an entirely appropriate means of calling attention to the abortion tragedy." And as principal deputy solicitor general from 1989 to 1993, Roberts co-authored a brief that said Roe v. Wade should be overturned.

Santorum's kind of fascist, through and through.

As this gets more and more airplay as the October deadline rolls up, Joe Biden's part in this needs to be mentioned every time he opens his mouth about an "exploratory committee" for the Democratic nomination.

Rushing to beat an October deadline when the biggest overhaul of the bankruptcy law in a quarter century goes into effect, rising numbers of Americans have filed for protection in the four months since the law was changed, seeking to have their debts erased.
...
Under the revised law, debtors who earn more than the median income in their state and who can repay at least $6,000 of their debt over five years will no longer be able to have their debts wiped out for a fresh start under the more generous provisions of Chapter 7 of the bankruptcy code. Instead, they will have to seek protection under Chapter 13, which requires a repayment schedule. In addition, under the new provisions, they will have to enroll in a court-supervised financial counseling program.
...
The rise, which lawyers and bankruptcy experts say is driven in large part by people who say they fear that it will become much more difficult to escape debt and seek a clean slate under the new law, appears to have caught some bankers and lawyers by surprise.

Bankers say the surge in filings is driven in part by misinformation about how the new law will work. They say it will force only the small percentage of people who abuse the system into regular payment schedules, while keeping an open door of debt forgiveness to the vast majority of bankruptcy filers, who are individuals rather than businesses.

"I would hope that consumers are not getting the rush-rush because they're afraid they won't have the same protection in a few months," said Wayne Abernathy, an executive at the American Bankers Association, which lobbied heavily for the new law.

Remember, Joe Biden pushed and pushed pushed for this bill. He's bought and paid for 100%. He's no friend of anyone who's not a rich lobbyist or who can hire rich lobbyists. Remind him of that often and loudly. President Joe Biden? Yeah, of the American Bankers Association, maybe.

Nicely done OP-Ed in todays Post. Written by a Vietnam Vet who happens to be a professor at Boston University.

Will a U.S. withdrawal guarantee a happy outcome for the people of Iraq? Of course not. In sowing the seeds of chaos through his ill-advised invasion, Bush made any such guarantee impossible. If one or more of the Iraqi factions chooses civil war, they will have it. Should the Kurds opt for independence, then modern Iraq will cease to exist. No outside power can prevent such an outcome from occurring anymore than an outside power could have denied Americans their own civil war in 1861.
...
For Bush personally, the consequences of leaving Iraq might be the most painful. The prospect of looking antiwar protester Cindy Sheehan in the eye to explain exactly what her son died for will become even more daunting. But as it is, the president can't dodge that question indefinitely. Postponing the issue simply swells the ranks of those with similar questions to ask.

The day that we cease all operations in Iraq and that becomes clear to the families of the honorable men and women who have given their lives to prove whose nut-sack was bigger in the Bush family, will be the beginning of the end of that family's political 'dynasty' in America, and perhaps the republican party's dominance in politics too. After all they have tied their fortunes to the perpetuation of this lie, knowing the truth but afraid to repeat it from Day One.

1. Damn...
   
2. What Librul Media?
   
3. It's Baaaack...
   
4. VBen Reductio ad absurdum
   
5. No Words
   
6. Bubble Boy
   
7. Not Sympathy, exactly...
   
8. Dummer'n'dog poop
   
9. Those who may Kiss My Ass or WTF, over?
   
10. Todays Bunnypants Summary