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.

1. republican genetics or something?
   
2. R.I.P James Brown
   
3. Investigations! (sung to the tune of "Tradition" from "Fiddler")
   
4. John Kerry is right ... again
   
5. Happy Holly Daze, or Festivus for the Restuvus