In the post below about Paul Hackett this came in the comments today, and I am posting it in it's entirety. It's from Leonard Clark (read about him here).

I have just returned from Hell and even though Mr. Hackett may not be from my branch of the service : I am mad as hell about what has transpired because he is a fellow soldier. The tactics that have been used against myself ever since I had announced my intentions to run for the U.S. Senate have taught me that our democracy is not always so democratic. My family's benefits and income were threatened as well as my being placed in a federal pen for the rest of my life and then just recently my taxes were audited supposedly randomly while I was over in a combat zone and every penny was then taken straight out of my family's bank account. So, I have learned the hard way about so called American Democracy but I know one thing they never should have attacked my family for now I will fight non-violently the fight to rescue the War on Terror from those who have hijacked it to enrich themselves and their corporate lackeys.

I have just returned from Iraq and the lie being foisted upon you the American people. I have ridden first hand day by day either as gunner or driver in my Humvee for a year long tour of hell in Iraq where everyday you have to play Russian Roulette with your life. Imagine having someone place a 357 magnum pistol next to your head everyday and praying that it won't go off. Then you start to get a feel for what some of us soldiers feel who go out of the wire everyday in Iraq.

Of course you always hear that we volunteered to defend our country and place our lives on the line well that it is true but what we did not volunteer for was to be slaughtered like sheep.

You see anybody who drives down the roads of Iraq through its cities and villages will pass by whole stretches of road where slaughter markets for sheep rebound. The stench from these slaughtered sheep is so strong sometimes that it is all one can do not to vomit when passing them. The passerby will see these poor sheep writhing and twisting in pain as their throats are cut and it is truly a pitiful sight as they slowly die with no way to defend themselves as their blood drain out in the street.

Well, the reason I had to bring up that whole example is to dismiss the criticism that we soldiers should die like sheep. But that's not the way it's going to be told to you the American people. What I have just told you is only the tip of the iceberg if you knew everything you would even redouble your efforts to get my poor fellow soldiers out of this grand lie foisted on us by grand liars.

I am not going to stand by as an American citizen and let this happen I will not be that citizen who says he was just following orders as the Nazi war criminals stated at Nuremburg. I am for fighting the War on Terror and not hijacking it to enrich my personal corporate donor friends and lackeys.
Our country is under attack from terrorist without and tyrants within.
Abraham Lincoln was right in his 1838 speech when he stated that the greatest danger that this country could face wouldn't be from our enemies outside of our country but from domestic tyrants inside it.

I will be officially running for the U.S. Senate as of March 29, 2006 and I will not officially campaign for it until that date. As of now I am not a candidate but will be in 33 days.
my views do not represent the U.S. government nor the Department of Defense

Leonard Clark
Kindergarten teacher
and damned liberal
(always the damned liberal)

I've always been partial to the planar vistas of the midwestern states. There's something striking about driving along fields of wheat, corn, beans or low sand hills as far as the eye could see, especially at sunset. Or seeing and feeling a thunderstorm over those fields with a horizon stretching forever, framing those magnificent clouds filled with deadly violence and incredible grandeur. Or the shmaltzy kitsch of the Corn Palace in Mitchell, the utterly original and insanely touristy Wall Drug before reaching the beauty of the Black Hills.

No more. I'll not set a foot in South Dakota again, and if it's for the rest of my life or until they come to their senses, makes me no nevermind. What a woman does with her body is her business, not the business of some fat-ass 30 year-old probably-never-laid convenience store clerk.

Tbogg has it right

I don't care about your discomfort or moral objection with regard to abortion.

Unless you are the one who is pregnant,
it
is
none
of
your
fucking
business.

It's enough to make those magnificent faces on Mt. Rushmore shed more than one tear. But I won't be there to see it.

Seems that Google will be just a bit more porn-free, but it has nothing to do with the christofascists, it's just the free market being, not free (which in this case seems to work for the owners of the pictures in question).

Google's mission to organise all the world's information was set back by a judge who ordered the Internet search leader to stop showing thumbnail images from porn site Perfect 10 on its Google images index.

The ruling in the copyright case may prevent the company from displaying thumbnails from other sites and could have an impact on its ambitious scheme to index the contents of millions of books, whether the copyright owners allow it or not. Google plans to appeal.

No word on whether Coke or pubic hair were involved.

Well, its' good to know that we can get Congress to launch that wiretapping investigation, dump the "threat levels" thing, repeal the PATRIOT Act lock, stock, and barrel (finally), because the inerrant Boy King has spoken:

President Bush sought Thursday to calm an uproar ... saying "people don't need to worry about security."

Thanks, Bunnypants your leadership is as equally unimpressive and uninspiring as your speaking skills. Fucktard.

Beloved Leader speaks sternly to the Brown Peoples he has subjugated...

"The people of the United States strongly condemn the destruction of the Golden Mosque," Bush said of the suspected al Qaeda bomb attack on Wednesday that destroyed the shrine in Samarra.
...
"The voices of reason from all aspects of Iraqi life understand that this bombing is intended to create civil strife, that the act was an evil act," Bush told reporters.

"I appreciate very much the leaders from all aspects of Iraqi society that have stood up and urged for there to be calm," he added.

Besides, it means so much coming from him, he's such a wonderful human being, idn't he?

So, the way to accomodate the vast, and vastly profitable gas-and-oil companies who have stood shoulder to shoulder with the 1600 Crew and all their predecessors every step of the way into power is to gut the science and conservation efforts surrounding the regulation of the gas and oil fields.

The Bureau of Land Management, caretaker of more land and wildlife than any federal agency, routinely restricts the ability of its own biologists to monitor wildlife damage caused by surging energy drilling on federal land, according to BLM officials and bureau documents.

The officials and documents say that by keeping many wildlife biologists out of the field doing paperwork on new drilling permits and that by diverting agency money intended for wildlife conservation to energy programs, the BLM has compromised its ability to deal with the environmental consequences of the drilling boom it is encouraging on public lands.
...
"The BLM is pushing the biologists to be what I call 'biostitutes,' rather than allow them to be experts in the wildlife they are supposed to be managing," said Steve Belinda, 37, who last week quit his job as one of three wildlife biologists in the BLM's Pinedale office because he said he was required to spend nearly all his time working on drilling requests. "They are telling us that if it is not energy-related, you are not working on it."

Washington - The federal government is on the verge of one of the biggest giveaways of oil and gas in American history, worth an estimated $7 billion over five years.

New projections, buried in the Interior Department's just-published budget plan, anticipate that the government will let companies pump about $65 billion worth of oil and natural gas from federal territory over the next five years without paying any royalties to the government.

Based on the administration figures, the government will give up more than $7 billion in payments between now and 2011. The companies are expected to get the largess, known as royalty relief, even though the administration assumes that oil prices will remain above $50 a barrel throughout that period.

As a result of Teapot Dome, Harding's administration has been remembered in history as one of the most corrupt to occupy the White House. Harding delegated his power, and ultimately delegated it to the wrong people.

Preznit Infantile is becoming more and more like that kid you don't want to be behind in the supermarket check-out line, the one whose mom won't let them get the super-sugar chocolate-covered Madison Avenue treat of the week. The more mom gets insistent and tries to reject pleas for the candy, the more the kid wails and complains...who wins? Seems that Beloved Leader has found his chocolate-covered treat in the never-ending 1600 Crew graft market, and is beginning his tantrum now.

"I want those who are questioning it to step up and explain why all of a sudden a Middle Eastern company is held to a different standard than a [British] company," Bush told reporters.

He said the transaction was thoroughly scrutinized by administration officials, who concluded that it poses no threat to national security.

The thinness of this whole "wartime" argument covering the expediency of all the illegal and questionable acts committed by this adminstration is shown by this one transaction. Their continual bleating that "we are at war...it's all different, 9/11 9/11 9/11" is made a lie by their acceptance of doing business with a state-owned company in the UAE, a country with close ties to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. If he doesn't get the objections to that, and he clearly doesn't, then the use of the veto in this single case isn't going to get him that nest-lining candy he's craving. All this is assuming that Unka Karl doesn't pull another rabbit out of his seemingly bottomless hat and threaten/bully/intimidate the opponents of this into acquiescing one more time in the interests of "politics" over Policy.

It shows that the 1600 Crew's "War" is less a war than a "ShopKreig" and Beloved Leader is the Head Buyer.

*OBB - Osama's Bestest Buddy

In yet another 1600 Crew Tora Bora moment, Preznit Collectin' D. Cash has made it pretty clear he's not going to endanger getting future revenues from his UAE buddies. National Security be damned, let a company from one of the three countries that recognized the Taliban as a legitimate government, and is a base for Al-Qaeda financial supporters do Port Security.

President George W. Bush said on Tuesday that a deal for a state-owned Dubai company to manage major U.S. ports should go forward and will not jeopardize U.S. security.
...
"After careful review by our government, I believe the transaction ought to go forward," Bush said. He added that if the U.S. Congress passed a law to stop the deal, "I'll deal with it with a veto."

The Democratic "Leadership" should be using every opportunity to read this crap into the congressional record at every floor speech, holding press conferences and beating the 1600 Crew about the head and shoulders with this little gift. More than likely though, they'll hold a strategy meeting at the Capital Grille, where there will be a suitable number of "harrumph harrumphs", and a "stinging" but inoffesively-worded press release will be sent condeming the UAE contracts and seeking a bi-partisan solution to the problem, because we Democrats do Policy not Politics. Jeebus.

It seems that Daryn Kagan might be declining to become the next Mrs. Whale Rider:

GOOD NEWS, BAD NEWS First the bad news: I hear that right-wing radio guy Rush Limbaugh and CNN daytime anchor Daryn Kagan — who've been dating for nearly two years — are finally kaput. The good news, of course, is that the fabulous Kagan is back on the market.

I have gotten a lot of email (thanks, all) about the withdrawl of Paul Hackett from the Ohio Senatorial race. Needless to say, I'm pissed off about it. I'm not pissed at Hackett, I'm annoyed with the Democratic "leadership", and I use that term very loosely.

Paul Hackett represented not just a chance to put a veteran of the Iraqi War into Congress, but it represented a chance to place a standard-bearer in the Senate for Democrats who are sick of the spineless equivocation of the Senate Democratic Caucus [we're looking at you Hillary, Chuck and Dianne].

I understand that Hackett did not want to grovel for fund-raising. I don't know that he'd have had to, with the netroots ability to raise money behind him. If the DSCC had their heads out of their asses, they might have realized that Paul Hackett was not going to be a candidate who could run over and kiss the ass of their choice in the electoral dialing-for-dollars marathon. Maybe they could have come up with a way to help him overcome that obstacle.

Sherrod Brown is a good man, and can certainly give Mike DeWine a run for his money this year. But, he's an "establishment" politician. He's going to run his campaign by the DSCC playbook, he's going to kiss Chuck Shumer's ass, and Harry Reid's ring. He's going to be more of the same, another Senator who hides from his shadow, who won't be any more than politically correct about everything as it pertains to issues that affect Americans, for fear of retribution from the 1600 Crew and their attack machinery.

It was our loss to have Paul Hackett go home. I'm sorry that the DSCC felt the need to encourage a primary in Ohio, and the attendant fundraising and work that goes with it. I think it cost us all a good man, and a chance to have an unflappable voice for change.

So, great job Chuck and Harry. Please don't call looking for money any time soon. I'll send a few dollars to Brown's campaign because DeWine needs to go, not because I support your efforts.

1. A letter
   
2. South Dakota
   
3. Awww....
   
4. Glad this is settled then
   
5. What a guy
   
6. How to foster corruption, the Teapot Dome variant
   
7. More OBB* the saga continues
   
8. Osama's Best Buddy
   
9. Willie Freed
   
10. Hackett and why I'm pissed