Oh boy, it just seems that the ability to doublespeak is a requirement for being a 1600 Crew Toady. Our glorious National Parks (which 99% of all republicans and Joe Lieberman want to sell off) are under attack by well, our National Government.

Once portals that lured gold-seeking pioneers, the black holes that dot the sun-baked mountainsides of this California desert haunt J.T. Reynolds.

The Death Valley National Park superintendent fears tourists will tumble down the decrepit shafts or vanish into the rocky tunnels that abound in his park’s famed Gold Rush-era mines and ghost towns.

To completely "mine-safe" some 6,000 shafts and caves would take money that Reynolds does not have.

"Most visitors do not realize that park resources have been under threat from deterioration, vandalism, neglect and rot for some time," Reynolds said. "We put up a good front and try to keep high visitor-use areas clean and neat. Even this facade is fading due to the lack of appropriate resources."

Across the 390 parks, preserves and historic sites that make up the 90-year-old national park system, Reynolds' colleagues face similar tough choices as growing costs from labor, utilities, maintenance, operations and preservation exceed wartime budgets from Washington.

Prior to joining the Bush Administration in July 2001, she was President of the Los Angeles-based Reason Foundation, a nonprofit current affairs research and communications organization.

Ms. Scarlett is author of numerous publications on incentive-based environmental policies. Ms. Scarlett received her B.A. and M.A. in political science from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she also completed her Ph.D. coursework and exams in political science and political economy.

I'm speechless. Well, not really. It's Heckuva-job Lynn to the rescue. Pretty soon all our Parks will look like Death Valley and they won't even be deserts (now).

Note: What the hell is a degree in "Political Economy"?

In the "No Science, Any Time" 1600 Crew, this has to have come as a shocker. Nah. Kidding. Like all other information that has a patina of scientific truth to it, it will be ignored as "incomplete" or some other bullshit.

Weighing in on the highest profile debate about global warming, the nation's premier science policy body on Thursday voiced a "high level of confidence" that Earth is the hottest it has been in at least 400 years, and possibly even the last 2,000 years.

After all, it could not have been that hot, since there were no air-conditioners on the dinosaurs that the cavemen rode, right? Now, there's some scientific reasoning.

So, the focus-group tested "cut and run" phrase has now taken the place of any meaningful discussion in the Congress, and we can continue to watch our young men and women who voluneteered to defend our country have their lives wasted as political pawns for incredibly corrupt (morally and in every other way) politicians who don't give a fart in a windstorm about them except at election time.

The Senate today rejected proposals on withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq, decisively voting down two competing Democratic amendments -- one that set a deadline for a pullout and the other that stopped short of establishing a timetable.

Senators first voted 86-13 to defeat a proposal , offered by Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) and Sen. Russell D. Feingold (D-Wis.), to "require a redeployment" from Iraq starting immediately and to be substantially completed by July 1, 2007.

A second measure , advanced by Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) and Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), drew support from more Democrats but still went down, 60-39. The nonbinding "sense of Congress" proposal urged President Bush to start pulling U.S. forces out of Iraq this year but did not set a withdrawal deadline.

Both proposals, offered as amendments to the 2007 defense authorization bill, were denounced by Republicans as advocating "defeatism" and a strategy of "cut and run."

In a floor speech, the majority leader said, "The proponents of these amendments want us to tell the new government of Iraq that we are leaving . . . no matter what the implications for the future of their country, no matter how much they plead with us to stay." He asserted that the proposals may differ in some details, "but the bottom line is exactly the same: the amendments tell us to set a deadline and leave by that deadline. This would be a dangerous policy, a reckless policy, a shameless policy."

Frist added, "The time to leave Iraq is when we have achieved or objectives. If we knew our objectives were unachievable, then these amendments might make sense. But our objectives are achievable, and we are achieving them." He charged that the amendments carry "the spirit of defeatism and surrender."

Fristy also has a son, who I believe is old enough to go off and serve in Mess O'Potamia, something that will never happen since republican Noblesse Oblige is limited to internships at the Heritage or American Enterprise Institutes where shedding blood for your country is restricted to paper cuts and coming to work hung-over from too much partying with your future K-Street corporate masters.

The temperature in Baghdad is 91 degrees at 11PM local time, the winds are from the west-southwest at 12 mph, the altimeter is 29.65 and the visibility is 6.2 miles. Sounds like a good place for a young republican to hump some field gear, while looking for IEDs, now that the minimum age for enlistment is now 42. Surely the Scion of Frist could stand a summer vacation...that lasted about 14 months and a return trip to boot.

91 degrees and a 56 degrees dewpoint around midnight and summer has only just begun. Well, at least it's a dry heat.

Woohoo, some Austrian journalist with balls takes on Bunnypants and what's he get? Lies and 9/11.

"So my question to you is why do you think that you've failed so badly to convince Europeans, to win their heads and hearts and minds?"

Bush: "Well, yeah, I thought it was absurd for people to think that we're more dangerous than Iran.

"I -- you know, it's -- we're a transparent democracy. People know exactly what's on our mind. We debate things in the open. We've got a legislative process that's active.

"Look, people didn't agree with my decision on Iraq. And I understand that. For Europe, September the 11th was a moment; for us it was a change of thinking.

"We're transparent" We have a legislative process" "9/11" mommy! mommy! waaaaah! they're being mean to me! waaaaah!

In another story about the abducted and murdered soldiers, there's this little gem:

Meanwhile, General Caldwell said that a US airstrike on a fleeing vehicle killed a senior al-Qaeda leader from Iraq on Friday in the same area where the two American soldiers went missing.

So typical of the Administration of the Simians, another pronouncement from on-high that is fraught with potentially perilous consequence made by someone sitting safely behind a desk. Subject: the up-coming shuttle launch.

NASA managers have rejected last-ditch pleas from their top safety officer and chief engineer to scrap next month's shuttle launch, saying that they will press ahead despite potentially catastrophic risks.

The head of the US space agency, Dr Michael Griffin, overruled warnings that there was a "relatively high" chance the shuttle's external fuel tank could shed some of its solid foam coating when it launches on 1 July, carrying seven crew including Briton Piers Sellers, an Edinburgh University graduate.

... Dr Griffin gave the final nod for next month's mission ... "We have elected to take the risk," he said."

If there's an accident (let's all hope not), wanna bet that they'll be rewriting history to have "Dr" Griffin fighting bravely to kill this launch, but finally conceding because of the stifling bureacracy of NASA and the 1600 Crew?

The lede.

Two U.S. soldiers, missing for three days since their abduction in an insurgent stronghold south of Baghdad, were found dead, a military spokesman said Tuesday, and a top U.S. commander ordered an investigation into why the men were isolated from a larger force in such a dangerous part of Iraq.

Those two soldiers are dead because of bad policies intiated by the Cabal that started this war on the "cheap". They wre there because there was probably not sufficient support to have more troops at that check-point and all the others that now have to be manned to ensure the now-mythical "security" in Iraq.

Three more soldiers have paid the ultimate price, not to secure the mythical "Free and Democratic" (forgive me while I laugh my ass off over that one) Iraq, but because Donald Rumsfeld, Cheney and Beloved Leader were not going to send more than some number of troops in that they pulled out of their ass. General Eric Shinseki was unceremoniously cashiered because he spoke the truth to power. He cared a hell of a lot more for Private First Class Kristian Menchaca, Private First Class Thomas L. Tucker, and Specialist David J. Babineau than any politician in the 1600 Crew ever did or ever will, all their public prostestation to the contrary. Words are cheap. The lives of our soldiers are not, unless you're a war-mongering republican chickenhawk piece of shit.

The deaths of these three young men doing their duty can be laid more directly at the doorstep of the NeoCons than almost any others. The lack of troops is a product of their "hearts and flowers" vision of post-Saddam Iraq. Their control of DOD policy, in contravention to the State Department's documented blueprints of the chaos that would ensue following a post-Saddam Iraq, is responsible for this.

How many more? Not a question I want to ask, but a question that might be answered all to soon. Way to go, NeoCon assholes.

Well friends, a real adversary (as opposed to the fictitious one represented by badman Saddam) is back to flexing its muscles in Southeast Asia. Yes, the North Koreans are getting ready to test their first ICBM. Now, adversaries testing their missiles was an old and honored tradition in the old Cold War days. Hell, we went up and sat off of Midway Island and watched the Soviets send ICBMs into the waters 300 miles or so north of there, they even had a task group with a missile-observation ship I think it was the Yuri Gagarin or something there to watch the results, we just bored holes in the ocean watching them watch their missiles, (and laughed at their inability to UNREP).

So, now we have a bunch of swaggering KaBoys in the Crew who are probably ready to send another group of young Americans off to die in another effort to enforce Preznit Deserting Fratboy's Preemption Doctrine.

The U.S. military yesterday moved ships into position off the coast of North Korea to detect the launch of any long-range ballistic missiles and prepared its new, unproven missile-interception system to attempt a response if necessary.

they declined to confirm a Washington Times story yesterday that said the system had recently been activated, and that the Bush administration is considering shooting down the North Korean missile.

"The United States has a limited missile-defense system, but I'm not going to discuss status or capabilities," said Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman.

There are nine interceptor missiles based in Alaska and two in California. They are at the core of a complex system that connects launch data from satellites and radars on land and aboard ships, and transmits the data to command-and-control facilities, where senior commanders make decisions about whether to launch interceptors. The system has not successfully intercepted a missile in its current configuration.
...
...Nor would the U.S. government want to risk an embarrassing failure of its system, they said, and it is possible that the missile could carry a satellite into space, rather than arc back to earth.

My worry would be that the ride'em cowboys in the 1600 Crew would decide that sending a few bombers in for a "surgical" strike (it's so easy, isn't it?) would be the perfect cure, Beloved Leader to Beloved Leader as an attention-getting mechanism.

We'll just have to see how this Strangelovian scenario plays out. Oh, and boys and girls there will be no fighting in the War Room.

The most prime example of the ineptitude of the 1600 Crew has to be what's happening in Afghanistan. If the Democrats can't get the backbone to point out that even with absolute, unfettered Carte Blanche that Bunnypants and Company have fucked up the situation in Afghanistan, with absolutely almost 100% public support for the efforts there (as opposed to Mess O'Potamia) then they need to rething whether or not they can stand up to the coming assault out of the Rovian Blast Fax.

As fighting in Afghanistan has intensified over the past three months, the U.S. military has conducted 340 airstrikes there, more than twice the 160 carried out in the much higher-profile war in Iraq, according to data from the Central Command, the U.S. military headquarters for the Middle East.

[chirp chirp chirp]

Thought so.

1. Yogi Bear weeps
   
2. No Science, Any Time
   
3. Big Fat Ass(hat) Alert
   
4. Bunnypants ... Lying Decider
   
5. Five O'Clock Follies, West
   
6. The Royal "We"
   
7. Bad Policy, Bad Results. It's that simple.
   
8. Too funny...well not really
   
9. Oh, yeah. That war.