The Year 2041

"Mommy, you know that war daddy always watches on the computer?"

"Yes, darling. That's the Middle East War, or World War III. People call it both."

"Well, we learned in school today that WE started that war without a reason."

"Oh, darling, that was a different time. It was a time of 'values'. Do you know what values are?"

"A thing you start a war over?"

"Well, that depends what your values are."

DAMN!!!

I just realized the final episode of 24 is 5/23, the same night as the WU TANG!

I don't have DVR!!!

One Helluvah Party!

Cheers to Senator George Voinovich from that GREAT state of Ohio (everyone's favorite) for sticking to what he believes, unlike Senator Lincoln Chaffee and I'm sure some others.

I tell ya, the Republicans are like children; everything is for the moment and nothing about the future. Why in the world would they lay out for John Bolton? What's the point? The only thing it can be is they have to be right, and must show everyone in the country that as a party they're right. If they were to vote their consciences I would imagine Bolton would not be confirmed, but voting him down means the leader of the party made a mistake. They can't have that.

But seriously, why would they vote for this guy? The big money that supports them, do you think they give a crap about John Bolton and the UN? They're still going to get their money as long as they relax tax and environmental laws. How many CEOs do you think are phoning in to discuss John Bolton? And why not, as a moderate, take a stand against a President whose numbers are falling, and are certainly worse on the coasts? Colin Powell doesn't like the guy! You hear that Token Lovers, COLIN POWELL!

The only people who really care about John Bolton are the 30% of the country who believe Bush can do no wrong, and most of those people don't have a clue what the Ambassador to the UN even does. To them it's all about the fight.

How many of these guys are happy with the Iraq War? How many of them are in their bedrooms with their wives (and boyfriends) talking about what a mistake it was, but yet they had to do it? I'm sure it happens nightly, especially as the death toll mounts, and the idea of democracy taking hold is virtually nil. So they gave Bush that vote, and now they lay out for Bolton? Again, what is the point?

Do all these Senators really want to be led by the 30% of the country that is in Bush's corner? I mean does Lincoln Chaffee have balls? This was an opportunity to say, "Listen, this guy's not the guy. Can't you find some other conservative goose-stepper we can agree on?" Nope, not these people. The party that never admits a mistake. The party that actually fears their own leadership. Fears.

The nice things about the Democrats these days is they took down their flies and noticed some nuts. Granted, it took a war, an election, and some breathing tube to do it, but they got there. At least, all the while, there were a few willing to stand the ground. With the Republicans it seems there's one, at least for the day, and those that quit.

I understand the conservatives hate the UN, and would like it disolved, but why? Do they want to see Europeans become more lax on environmental laws? Do they want to see Europe treat their public bathrooms like we do? And their subways? Do they want the Europeans, Asians, and Arabs to sink their educational standards? Should they match ours and be 15th in the world while being the richest country? It can't be the war thing since we run that show. It's not as if the UN is ever going to stop us from going to war without evidence, right? Didn't we prove that?

Another conservative like George Bush is unlikely to win the White House in 2008, so why fear him? Again, the monied interests in every state really don't care about the UN, so why are they fearing the puppet? Dick Cheney's half dead, Rumsfeld is getting no younger, Frist is more foolish by the day, moderates in the party don't want to be in photographs with Delay, and Hastert has nothing to do with Bolton. So what gives?

Who do these people want to be led by? Are they really all just tax haters living for today who will do anything just to win? Is it just that simple?

If you're going to goto the hill for John Bolton you've really got some issues, and those issues are going to come back to haunt you. This I know.

Behind Closed Doors

"Pat, are you out of your mind? What are you saying?"

"Hey, I'm not afraid to say what I believe. Just because the rest of you boys won't do it doesn't mean I won't."

"But Pat, you're hurting the conservative movement."

"Oh please, you guys haven't stuck to your guns for the last 5 years. At least one of us is. Besides, I don't have a constituency. I just need ratings."

"Well, Pat, you know we agree, but you just can't go around saying these things. It looks like we're going to have to take you of the list for the next Conservative Citizens of America dinner!"

Muzak

More of The Band from Jersey City.

Anyone Care for Some...

Cooked Goose?

Portraying ethics questions faced by Tom DeLay as a liberal plot, the majority leader's conservative supporters are staging a high-profile show of support by throwing a gala in his honor.

About 900 people had tickets to Thursday night's $250-per-plate dinner at the Capital Hilton, organized by about a dozen conservative groups. The money will be used to pay for the event, organizers said.

Unless

Something interesting happens today you'll need to get your news elsewhere ;)

Sorry. After watching CNN's live reporting from the Capitol Building last night I just couldn't bring myself to take life seriously today. I didn't see FOX's coverage, but I'm sure the pilots were liberals.

Priceless

For everyone but the dude's wife.

You must read this.

And the Forecast Calls

For MAJOR SNOW STORMS ACROSS THE NORTHEAST AND SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA FROM NOV. 1 THRU NOV 7.

A Senate bill seeking to clarify the duties of the National Weather Service is generating a storm of controversy.

The bill, introduced last month by Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., would prevent the weather service from offering products or services that are or could be offered by private-sector weather companies such as WeatherData in Wichita or AccuWeather in State College, Pa.

Who has Santorum's ear?

Shocker...

If he had backbone maybe things would've been different:

The Homeland Security Department usually has been the federal agency most reluctant to raise the national terror alert level, former Secretary Tom Ridge said Tuesday.

Ridge, who resigned Feb. 1 as the first Cabinet-level homeland security chief, defended the color-coded alert system that he helped create after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, but he said it could be changed to give more information to the public...

"In those debates, in those discussions, more often than not we were the least inclined to raise it," Ridge told reporters.

"Sometimes we disagreed with the intelligence assessment," Ridge said. "Sometimes we thought even if the intelligence was good, you don't necessarily put the country on (alert). ... There were times when some people were really aggressive about raising it, and we said, 'For that?'"

Now go write your book, douche bag.

Uhhh, Wrong Again?

Of course. Wrong again:

THE capture of a supposed Al-Qaeda kingpin by Pakistani agents last week was hailed by President George W Bush as “a critical victory in the war on terror”. According to European intelligence experts, however, Abu Faraj al-Libbi was not the terrorists’ third in command, as claimed, but a middle-ranker derided by one source as “among the flotsam and jetsam” of the organisation.

For more info please email us at George.W.Bush@TotalMoron.gov.

I'm sure the media will be reporting this correction has heavily as they reported his capture.

The Donald

The Times is reporting on Donald Rumsfeld's desire to remake the military, again.

As I've stated many times, I like Donald Rumsfeld. Always have, always will. Do I think he has blundered? Surely, but at least he's going to shoot straight, and doesn't lie to get what he wants. Think about the day he held an open forum with the troops which resulted in him getting publicly destroyed over armored humvees and the lack of equipment. Do you think Bush, Cheney, or anyone else would ever have put themselves in that position? Afterall, Bush hardly fields questions from reporters! This is why I never wanted to see Rumsfeld go.

I think all his critics forget that his job is Secretary of Defense (Offense).

What does worry me about Rumsfeld is his desire/plan to see the military reorganized/remade into a smaller, more techlogically based armed forces. It's a natural progression for the military, and all things, to become more advanced. That I accept. What worries me is if the US starts to cut back troops and rely on technology we'll have fewer troops in harm's way. That may sound like a good thing, but I don't think it is.

The fewer troops involved the further away we are from understanding the conflicts we're engaged in. Without human interaction we will find ourselves in a more precarious situation down the road. If fewer troops die in combat Americans will find combat more palatable, and that's also a bad thing. If the US becomes a logistics provider while outsourcing the war to troops in other countries that's also bad. It's not as if we even get the real news on the ground from our own troops and media, so if other nations are doing our dirty work we'll have less reporting than we do now since most newsrooms won't care to cover stories if Americans aren't being killed.

Think of this technological example: I often hear critics saying we had a chance to kill Osama bin Laden, and why didn't we send in the unmanned Predator, armed to kill, to take him out? Here we are discussing our biggest individual target ever, and we are hopeful an unmanned plane can get the job done. Talk about putting no one at risk except for the 50, or so, Princes and acquaintances who were in the area.

Technology is certainly incredibly helpful, but it creates almost as many problems as it solves.

Rumsfeld is a man who accomplishes what he sets out to accomplish. He didn't take the reigns of the military to fight wars in the Middle East. He set out to remake the Armed Forces, and that's another problem. He plans on meeting his goals.

Initially, and certainly a mistake, Rumsfeld wanted 50,000 troops to fight the war in Iraq, which of course would have made the situation even worse. He is an advocate of smaller, quicker, lighter, forces. Does that have any relevance with regard to the Iraq War? I have no idea, but it's doubtful. Regardless, he stuck to what he wanted. If he continues to do that it could be a serious problem.

If Rumsfeld is so determined to slim down the military it's going to have to come at the expense of Iraq. Troops will have to be drawn down from that conflict, and I'm hopeful he doesn't do it out of his desire to see his goals realized. If he is too hasty in pulling back troops, handing Iraq back over to Iraq, he could certainly exacerbate the issue. Sometimes ambition can blind you from seeing what really needs to be done.

He's a super smart guy, but I hope his ambitions don't get in the way of fixing a problem he has already screwed up at least twice.

Truly Amazing

So I've been trying to get tickets for tonight's Built to Spill show, and using Craigslist to do so.

If I were to find a connection at a reasonable price I'd have to meet this person somewhere and make the swap, right? Not anymore.

I can PayPal the payment and the person, if they used online ticketing, can email me the ticket upon receiving the payment.

We truly live in ridiculous times.

Numbers Games

Robert Samuelson:

As a share of national income, federal taxes in fiscal 2004 were 16.3 percent, the lowest since 1959. Meanwhile, budget increases go well beyond defense and homeland security. Even excluding these categories and "mandatory" programs (Social Security, Medicare, etc.), federal spending has risen 4.8 percent a year (after inflation) under Bush, estimates Stephen Slivinski of the Cato Institute. That's the highest rate, he says, since Richard Nixon. In 2003 Bush proposed and Congress approved the biggest new spending program since Lyndon Johnson's administration, the Medicare drug benefit. It was all deficit financing; there was no new tax for any of it.

Gone is any sense of shame about overspending and undertaxing. For 2006 the budget is reckoned at almost $2.6 trillion, with an estimated deficit close to $400 billion. Bridging that gap would require Republicans and Democrats to do what neither wants -- scrub government of less useful spending and then raise taxes. Democrats prefer to deplore Republican "irresponsibility." Republicans prefer to tax less and spend more.

One would think with the conservative desire to "make things fair" with a flat tax they'd also want to make things fair by increasing taxes to equal the numbers of 1959! I have this weird feeling that's not going to happen.

Maybe English Language Cripple Steve Forbes can enlighten us all as to why it's still fair?

Following Up

On what I wrote about women the other day, there's this:

The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, helped redraw the political landscape in America, giving President Bush and the Republicans an advantage over the Democrats, according to a new survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. But Republicans may have difficulty consolidating the gains because of divisions within their expanded coalition.

The survey underscored how important the issues of terrorism and national security and Bush's personal appeal were in helping the GOP put together a winning coalition of voters in 2004. The findings suggest that Bush's reelection depended not just on motivating the Republican base but also on his success in attracting swing voters and even some Democrats.

Which I guess means the country is still being run by dumber and dumber men.

Now's Seems Like a Good Time

To change the policy:

An Agriculture Department agency paid a freelance writer at least $7,500 to write articles touting federal conservation programs and place them in outdoors magazines, according to agency records and interviews.

The Natural Resources Conservation Service hired freelancer Dave Smith in September 2003 to "research and write articles for hunting and fishing magazines describing the benefits of NRCS Farm Bill programs to wildlife habitat and the environment," according to agency procurement documents obtained by The Washington Post through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Smith, contracted to craft five stories for $1,875 each, also was to "contact and work magazine editors to place the articles in targeted publications," the records show.

The disclosure of the contract comes as the Bush administration is under scrutiny for its controversial public relations practices, including payments to journalists to promote administration policies and government-produced "video news releases" that resemble broadcast news stories.

President Bush said the government should no longer put journalists on the payroll after disclosures earlier this year that commentator Armstrong Williams was paid $241,000 by the Education Department to promote Bush's education policy and columnist Maggie Gallagher received $21,500 from the Department of Health and Human Services to work on the president's marriage initiative.

If they thought the policy was actually an honest one they'd defend it, not do away with it.

Nice

Check it:

Salon columnist Joe Conason posed this question about the story:

"Are Americans so jaded about the deceptions perpetrated by our own government to lead us into war in Iraq that we are no longer interested in fresh and damning evidence of those lies? Or are the editors and producers who oversee the American news industry simply too timid to report that proof on the evening broadcasts and front pages?"

Read on, please.

Who's Luckier Than This Guy?

Seriously:

King Abdullah of Jordan has agreed to pardon Ahmed Chalabi, the controversial Iraqi political leader, who was sentenced to 22 years in prison for fraud after his bank collapsed with $300m (£160m) in missing deposits in 1989.

Jalal Talabani, the Iraqi President, asked the king to resolve the differences between Jordan and Mr Chalabi, now Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq, during a visit to Ammanthis week.

Latif Rashid, the Iraqi minister of water resources, said Mr Talabani confirmed to him that King Abdullah had promised, in effect, to quash the conviction. He expected there would first be a meeting between Jordanian officials and Mr Chalabi "who has some questions of his own."

It's great to have money, right?

This guy drags the US into war, then turns his back on the US while admitting that he really didn't care if he had to lie to get us into war because it worked! Then the US dragged him out of his home after they realized he wasn't an ally.

Now Chalabi's part of the Iraqi government and the US and Iraqi governments (I throw in Iraq to be nice) convinced the Jordanians to pardon him for his fraud. So not only will he not spend a day in jail, but he'll also keep all the cash, I assume, as well as the cash John Q Taxpayer has given him over the years.

I'm sure when Iraq is a democracy he'll pay everyone back.

Wow, Ken Lay should get his lawyer! Then again, Ken Lay need only worry if he ever has to go to court...

Hillary

I'm not sure what's going to happen here, but I know for sure Republicans will be all over this story, regardless of how much Hillary Clinton had to do with it.

I personally have a slight connection to Reggie Ray through a friend, and according to him Clinton couldn't have known, and wouldn't have. Why would she jeopardize everything over a fundraiser. That's not even a question.

But conservative scum have nothing these days, so the talking points will hit FOX NEWS and Rush Limbaugh at a torrid pace.

If Americans are over one thing (70% of them) it's Clinton bashing. I sorta welcome this battle myself because it seems all the things Conservatives have tried to hit on lately have not been very fruitful. Dragging Hillary through the mud won't be a good tactic, I assure you.

Afterall, the Clintons shot a man in the back of his head while the plane was crashing!!!

Thanks For Working Here...

Now go FUCK YOURSELF! Yep, that's United and Delta, and the green light has been provided by the courts.

As United has cut salaries it has also been pushing to reneg on their employee pension plans, and the Federal Bankruptcy Court has given them the go. Judge Eugene R. Wedoff had this to say:

"The least bad of the available choices here," the judge said, "has got to be the one that keeps an airline functioning, that keeps employees being paid."

Well, there's something to be said for that, right? Wrong.

I would assume the airlines employ many capable workers who can go out and attempt to make ends meet. Retirees who planned on having this money are shit out of luck. Their pensions have already been reduced, and now they'll be reduced even more. Hope you planned ahead for that!

Guess who will be picking up the tab here? Let me give you a hint: THE US TAXPAYERS! That's right! And I don't mean the RICH. I mean the middle class. What would lead anyone to believe the rich are going to pay more taxes for anything?

See right now the PBGC is funded through premiums paid by employers with healthy defined-benefit pensions, but since 2003 the Corp has been struggling. With the markets down, and PBGC's liabilities up, things are bad. At some point Congress will have no choice but to ask taxpayers to create another bailout. As if the airlines haven't been bailed out enough! But this is going to happen. This ruling may likely set off a dominoe effect allowing other large airlines and corporations to default on their pension plans which will force the PBGC to pick them up.

There is almost no way taxpayers won't have to bail them out, unless, somehow, PBGC is allowed to default as well, which I believe isn't legal. Then again, what is legal these days? I don't even want to speculate on any of this because I'm getting really sick.

I feel bad for the current employees who are having their wages cut, certainly, but I have to look at the whole picture. It really stinks for those people. It's unfair, and it's wrong.

I want to digress for a second and point out a great example of how these airlines are run.

Because the airlines didn't want to invest in high level security, instead paying minimum wage whenever possible, we were left with weak security, which resulted in, well you know. When the industry suffered setbacks Congress was more than happy to bail them out, while other airlines, smaller ones, were doing just fine. It's still that way today. These airlines grow and grow and grow, trying to grab as many gates as possible, and then all of a sudden they are no longer self sustainable and here comes the Government! That's capitalism? Is that how it works? Airlines want to cut costs to gain investment, and look good in the eyes of Wall St. In the end, who pays?

The best part about it, or the worst, is the Republican politicians who believe in "competition" as the only way to make the engine go. They are the ones who will be front and center looking to save the day. While the millionaire CEOs, and the like, have their Denny Hasterts on the phone, the Dick Durbins of the world have to be concerned with the unions, and those who are now screwed, as well as his concern for the airlines.

Ok, I'm back. Lets look at the retirees again.

Taking it a step further for you retirees, your Social Security checks are going to be less as well! Hope you weren't counting on that too! Oh yeah, ohhhhhh yeaaaaah! You feel that? Do you? It feels waaaaay gooood. That's a conservative doing to you what you never thought he'd too: He's putting it right in your ass! You like that? Get used to it, because here comes his foot!

Oh, you want to go further? I'll go further. Your health benefits as defined by Medicare, that'll cost you more down the road too. Prescription drugs will cost more. Everything in your life will cost MORE! Wait? What's that I hear? Do I hear retired Americans, holding hands, walking across the nation, singing, "America the Beautiful?" Do I? Wave those flags, folks.

So when the PBGC starts to go belly up, and the unions start to strike, and the Congress starts the bailout, will it THEN be time to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans? The ones who can still afford first class seats?

Btw, the cost of gasoline has exacerbated this problem, and guess who wishes he could do something about it? He wishes! In fact, he even prays.

Maybe he'll follow Ronnie when the strikes come rolling in and bring in the military to maintain order because afterall that's all he knows how to do.

There are times when I'm embarrassed to be represented by this government. This is one of those times.

Holy Jim Lampley!

Sportscaster and apparent political Blogger:

At 5:00 p.m. Eastern time on Election Day, I checked the sportsbook odds in Las Vegas and via the offshore bookmakers to see the odds as of that moment on the Presidential election. John Kerry was a two-to-one favorite. You can look it up.

People who have lived in the sports world as I have, bettors in particular, have a feel for what I am about to say about this: these people are extremely scientific in their assessments. These people understand which information to trust and which indicators to consult in determining where to place a dividing line to influence bets, and they are not in the business of being completely wrong. Oddsmakers consulted exit polling and knew what it meant and acknowledged in their oddsmaking at that moment that John Kerry was winning the election.

And he most certainly was, at least if the votes had been fairly and legally counted. What happened instead was the biggest crime in the history of the nation, and the collective media silence which has followed is the greatest fourth-estate failure ever on our soil.

Many of the participants in this blog have graduate school educations. It is damned near impossible to go to graduate school in any but the most artistic disciplines without having to learn about the basics of social research and its uncanny accuracy and validity. We know that professionally conceived samples simply do not yield results which vary six, eight, ten points from eventual data returns, thaty's why there are identifiable margins for error. We know that margins for error are valid, and that results have fallen within the error range for every Presidential election for the past fifty years prior to last fall. NEVER have exit polls varied by beyond-error margins in a single state, not since 1948 when this kind of polling began. In this past election it happened in ten states, all of them swing states, all of them in Bush's favor. Coincidence? Of course not.

In addition to this, I received two emails and an Instant Message the day of the election from two Republicans and a buddy who's too much of a tool to paint himself.

All three of them focused on the market forces of the election, and how the market is usually right, assuming it's not being manipulated.

Well, having lived in recent times I was well aware that markets are manipulated, and not to get too excited. Of course they cheated. That's what they do.

Cheers to Lampley for putting himself out there.

PK

NYTIMES:

Hell hath no fury like a scammer foiled. The card shark caught marking the deck, the auto dealer caught resetting a used car's odometer, is rarely contrite. On the contrary, they're usually angry, and they lash out at their intended marks, crying hypocrisy.

And so it is with those who would privatize Social Security. They didn't get away with scare tactics, or claims to offer something for nothing. Now they're accusing their opponents of coddling the rich and not caring about the poor.

Well, why not? It's no more outrageous than other arguments they've tried. Remember the claim that Social Security is bad for black people?

Before I take on this final insult to our intelligence, let me deal with a fundamental misconception: the idea that President Bush's plan would somehow protect future Social Security benefits.

If the plan really would do that, it would be worth discussing. It's possible - not certain, but possible - that 40 or 50 years from now Social Security won't have enough money coming in to pay full benefits. (If the economy grows as fast over the next 50 years as it did over the past half-century, Social Security will do just fine.) So there's a case for making small sacrifices now to avoid bigger sacrifices later.

But Mr. Bush isn't calling for small sacrifices now. Instead, he's calling for zero sacrifice now, but big benefit cuts decades from now - which is exactly what he says will happen if we do nothing. Let me repeat that: to avert the danger of future cuts in benefits, Mr. Bush wants us to commit now to, um, future cuts in benefits.

This accomplishes nothing, except, possibly, to ensure that benefit cuts take place even if they aren't necessary.

Now, about the image of Mr. Bush as friend to the poor: keep your eye on the changing definitions of "middle income" and "wealthy."

In last fall's debates, Mr. Bush asserted that "most of the tax cuts went to low- and middle-income Americans." Since most of the cuts went to the top 10 percent of the population and more than a third went to people making more than $200,000 a year, Mr. Bush's definition of middle income apparently reaches pretty high.

But defenders of Mr. Bush's Social Security plan now portray benefit cuts for anyone making more than $20,000 a year, cuts that will have their biggest percentage impact on the retirement income of people making about $60,000 a year, as cuts for the wealthy.

These are people who denounced you as a class warrior if you wanted to tax Paris Hilton's inheritance. Now they say that they're brave populists, because they want to cut the income of retired office managers.

Let's consider the Bush tax cuts and the Bush benefit cuts as a package. Who gains? Who loses?

Suppose you're a full-time Wal-Mart employee, earning $17,000 a year. You probably didn't get any tax cut. But Mr. Bush says, generously, that he won't cut your Social Security benefits.

Suppose you're earning $60,000 a year. On average, Mr. Bush cut taxes for workers like you by about $1,000 per year. But by 2045 the Bush Social Security plan would cut benefits for workers like you by about $6,500 per year. Not a very good deal.

Suppose, finally, that you're making $1 million a year. You received a tax cut worth about $50,000 per year. By 2045 the Bush plan would reduce benefits for people like you by about $9,400 per year. We have a winner!

I'm not being unfair. In fact, I've weighted the scales heavily in Mr. Bush's favor, because the tax cuts will cost much more than the benefit cuts would save. Repealing Mr. Bush's tax cuts would yield enough revenue to call off his proposed benefit cuts, and still leave $8 trillion in change.

The point is that the privatizers consider four years of policies that relentlessly favored the wealthy a fait accompli, not subject to reconsideration. Now that tax cuts have busted the budget, they want us to accept large cuts in Social Security benefits as inevitable. But they demand that we praise Mr. Bush's sense of social justice, because he proposes bigger benefit cuts for the middle class than for the poor.

Sorry, but no. Mr. Bush likes to play dress-up, but his Robin Hood costume just doesn't fit.

Every so often I stop reading his columns because I want to break someone's face after I do. And then I start reading them again after I've calmed.

Great

I appreciate the Chicago Tribune, and other papers, running stories about the WMD manipulation that went on before we went to war in Iraq. History will surely look down upon the United States, Britain, and any other nation involved in the lies and cover ups.

A Michigan congressman is seeking more information from President Bush about a classified British memo, leaked during Britain's recent election campaign, that claims the president decided by summer 2002 to overthrow Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and was determined to ensure that U.S. intelligence data supported his policy.

The memo, in which British foreign policy aide Matthew Rycroft summarized a July 23, 2002, meeting of Prime Minister Tony Blair with top security advisers, reports on a U.S. visit by Richard Dearlove, then head of Britain's MI-6 intelligence service.

The memo does not specify which Bush administration officials met with Dearlove.

Beyond recognizing the distortions, most Americans really don't care about the story.

You've got your two, maybe three groups who even consider the story.

First you have your Bush supporters, and they apparently don't care about anything when it comes to lying about the war, so these news stories are really irrelevant. They are believers, and they have their radio programs, websites, and TV shows giving them daily excuses to be used amongst people with brains. If all this fails they always have, "We had to do something after 9/11!"

Then you have your "moderates" who may have supported the war for reasons other than the lies. These folks tend to think of themselves as smarter than those who are full on Bush supporters because they don't take their cues from the conservatives. However, they saw the war as necessary to promote democracy in the Middle East. They are waiting for the dominoes.

These people read stories like this and are also not affected because the WMD wasn't really part of their rationale. Of course, they were always willing to start a war in Iraq, even on 9/10. Don't you remember all the moderates clamoring about Saddam the summer before 9/11? Riiight. Mostly for them, it's time to move on about this. They are different from the first group because most of those people probably still believe WMD are in Iraq, but these people know better, again. The story is irrelevant.

However, where these people fail is they have now come to accept 'lying to convince the populace to come along' as an acceptable political tool. I've had conversations with these types of people and it is on this point where they usually get flustered.

Some of the people want Kerry now too!

Then there are those who knew all along the WMD story was bogus, and even if there were chemical weapons, per se, that was not reason enough to goto war. Chemical and biological weapons are battlefield weapons that impose little, or no threat to the United States. Nuclear weapons are the only types of weapons Americans needed to be concerned with when it came to Iraq. The White House and the "liberal media" managed to lump them all together which meant that if a tic-tac vial of Sarin had been discovered in Tikrit it was reason enough to spend $300 Billion on a war. Absurd.

We, the non-believers, are so far past this story since we knew better all along, and didn't have to lie to ourselves to make America seem great. These stories preach to the choir.

So who is the story being written for? I'm not really sure. I guess I'm glad the story is still out there as a reminder to the first group of how dumb they are for voting this puppet back into office. Hopefully these stories will have an affect on the midterm elections as well, exposing the hypocrisy of this generally lying party (in its current state).

The thing of it is, as long as the Tim Russerts of the world choose to interview James Carville and Mary Matalin, these stories will remain unread and uncared for by the people who need to hear it because you know they're certainly not going to read about how wrong they are.

Most people in the world don't want to be told they're wrong, especially flag-waving Americans. That's why it's been so hard for most of them to admit the Iraq War has been sold on lies. That's why they make up new excuses every day. That's why they don't read these stories. That's why the media needs to cover it on TV and radio, not just in the paper.

If you ever wonder why these people can't see the truth it's because like the President, they can't accept any blame for America being wrong, except, of course, if we're talking about Clinton...or Roosevelt...or....

Nasty

This isn't what I'm usually thinking of when I think of "Right Wing Nuts":

Last night, anti-abortion extremist Neal Horsley was a guest on The Alan Colmes Show, a FOX News radio program. The topic was an interesting one - whether or not an internet service provider should allow Horsley to post the names of abortion doctors on his website. Horsley does that as a way of targeting them and one doctor has been killed. In the course of the interview, however, Colmes asked Horsley about his background, including a statement that he had admitted to engaging in homosexual and bestiality sex.

At first, Horsley laughed and said, "Just because it's printed in the media, people jump to believe it."

"Is it true?" Colmes asked.

"Hey, Alan, if you want to accuse me of having sex when I was a fool, I did everything that crossed my mind that looked like I..."

AC: "You had sex with animals?"

NH: "Absolutely. I was a fool. When you grow up on a farm in Georgia, your first girlfriend is a mule."

AC: "I'm not so sure that that is so."

NH: "You didn't grow up on a farm in Georgia, did you?"

AC: "Are you suggesting that everybody who grows up on a farm in Georgia has a mule as a girlfriend?"

NH: It has historically been the case. You people are so far removed from the reality... Welcome to domestic life on the farm..."

Colmes said he thought there were a lot of people in the audience who grew up on farms, are living on farms now, raising kids on farms and "and I don't think they are dating Elsie right now. You know what I'm saying?"

Horsley said, "You experiment with anything that moves when you are growing up sexually. You're naive. You know better than that... If it's warm and it's damp and it vibrates you might in fact have sex with it."

Hey, I didn't see it since I'm smart enough to not listen to his show, but if anyone else did I really would love to know if this was a serious thing.

That's Right

The women are smarter:

The gender gap is now 25 years old and, according to recent polling, it is alive and well.

A Democratic polling memo released yesterday found that women, who voted for President Bush last year in large numbers, have begun migrating back to their traditional home in the Democratic Party as the public's agenda has shifted from homeland security and terrorism to domestic concerns such as jobs and the economy.

There has long been a gender gap between the parties, with women tending to vote Democratic in disproportionate numbers. Bush all but closed that gap last year, losing the female vote to Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) by three percentage points. But the memo pointed to a March survey that found women favoring Democrats when asked which party's candidates they would support if congressional elections were held today.

There's No Crying in Baseball

Just steroids.

In the first year of toughened steroid testing, home runs are down in the major leagues for the first time since 2002.

Florida Marlins pitcher Todd Jones doesn't think it's a coincidence. He's convinced there's a connection.

"Unfortunately I do. I hate it, but there has been a correction made in the system, and the numbers are going to suffer for a couple of years," he said Monday. "I hate to admit it because I didn't want to. I'm as disappointed as any fan would be that it's going to end up showing to be the truth. But it's got to be good for the game to get back to an even playing field. I just didn't realize how deep it was."

An average of 1.97 home runs were hit in games through Sunday, down 8.8 percent from the 2.16 average in the first five weeks of last season, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. It's the lowest level for the first five weeks since 2002's 1.93 average and below the 2.14 average of the last decade.

Afghanistan Rebuilt

Maybe if we had stayed there for more than 5 minutes things would be different.

The head of Afghanistan's peace and reconciliation commission held out an amnesty today for all rebels fighting American and government forces, including the most wanted men, the Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, and a renegade commander, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

Unbelievable

If ever a story pointed out everything right and wrong in this country it is this one. It's almost hard to read. It's even more ridiculous knowing that my sister puts parents like these behind bars, and yet she still smiles and is nice to everyone.

A little black 2 year old girl who has no support in her life, who never asked for this life compared with a woman white woman who quite possibly brought all her problems on herself. Who do you think conservatives support?

Legal Aid has not had a DNR case since Moesha. "They used to be fairly regular occurrences, every three or four months, say, we'd get one," said Mr. Walsh, who is now a supervising attorney with the Legal Aid Society's Foster Children's Project. "When they get that issue, they seek our appointment," Mr. Walsh said. "Do they fight us, and say, 'No'? Never. Never. Do we have Terri Schiavo-like battles about this? No."

DCF officials did not respond to two phone calls last week.

Gov. Bush has appointed two more secretaries to lead DCF since the agency initially mishandled Moesha's case under Ms. Kearney, but an unfair practice of valuing some lives more than others continues to hurt some of the neediest and most fragile Floridians. In 2003, after failing to protect a severely mentally retarded woman from being raped while in state custody, DCF fought to save the woman's fetus. Similarly, late last month, after failing to protect a 13-year-old in state custody from becoming pregnant, DCF fought to save the girl's fetus. While the state was fighting fiercely to save the unborn, it continued quietly fighting — using private lawyers — to avoid financial responsibility for a living child, one irreversibly harmed while dependent on the state for protection.

Too Easy

There's so much to say here I'm just not gonna say anything.

Meet the Hacks

Last night I watched the repeat Meet the Press. Tim Russert's first guest former CIA Agent Gary Schroen was very frank and good. I enjoyed that. It's been a while since I've REALLY enjoyed a MTP guest.

But of course, the good times could only last so long as the two biggest jackasses on the planet were back on the screen: Mary Matalin and James Carville. I never knew Carville was gay until he got married.

The two of these people do NOTHING to help this country move forward. Carville is very smart, but his intelligence is shown up by his character. Matalin is just a hack. She will say anything, twist words 2 million ways, and never directly answer a question. She consistently poses questions back as opposed to answering them because she can't be straightforward.

The two of them were necessary on Sunday because we needed the husband and wife take on the filibuster issue.

Russert is such a pushover on top of it all. He just sits there smiling as if the issue is a fun little coffee talk. It's not. It's ridiculous. It's hypocrisy. And here we are, right and left, man and woman, husband and wife, blah and blah and blah. Give me a break.

Put some real people on the show, and don't give me this right/left crap. Bring on historians, professors, people that know what they're talking about, people in the media who wrote columns that matter. Do some, SOME broadcasting that is actually for the good of the public instead of Mr. and Mr. Hack.

Comedy

I'm pretty sure I put this up last time, but just in case I didn't, here it is again.

Comedy in it's purest state.

Continued

So back to Bush and conservatives "blaming America" and Roosevelt.

Conservatives have wanted to blame FDR forever, and when they get to take an unchalleneged freebie they will. What rankles me is Bush has no idea about FDR. Probably doesn't know thing one about World War II, FDR, or the isolationists.

As he heads to Eastern Europe he has no problem blaming generations of the past for supposed wrongs committed. It'd be so nice for them if they could erase the moniker, "the Greatest Generation" and apply it at a different time to an era when a Republican was in control.

Not too surprisingly, Putin is able to look at things in their relative places, as he commented that what took place between Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill was a "different time." He's not excusing the actions of anyone, or saying they were wrong. It's easy to have 20/20 hindsight, of course. But don't you worry, our Bush will never let us down, as he has TAKEN RESPONSIBILITY!

If Bush wants to speak about what doing the right, or wrong thing is he would discuss the Congressmen of World War II who are most similar to himself right now:: the Isolationists. This of course was Bush's policy up until the day someone told him it wasn't. I'll guess September 17th, 2001.

The most conservative Senators of that age were opposed to US involvement in a "European war." If Republicans had been in charge of America during the time of FDR we most likely would have remained neutral. It was not until after Kristalnacht that FDR was able to take on the isolationists based on moral grounds. These people were the "America First" crowd. FDR, despite polls showing Americans wanted no part, brought us into the war. Of course, Bush gets on the podium and focuses on what resulted after the war had ended. Bush probably believes America was the world leader then like it is now. He has no idea about anything.

Now if he wanted to take responsiblity, and speak about how one dominoe affects another he would discuss Ronald Reagan & George Bush Sr. supporting the Afghanistan government against the USSR, and how that actually led to the rise of Osama bin Laden. THAT'S SOMETHING TO TALK ABOUT, SHMUCK!

I'm not even in that camp of blame because it's impossible to see the future, but Bush wants it both ways, of course. There is serious blame to go around though. Since the "we're not nation builders" crowd left the Afghans and Northern Alliance high and dry after we got what we needed out of them. Well, we sure as hell got something, and we're dealing with it today.

Just liked isloationsist compared Roosevelt to Stalin and Hitler in another time, I'm sure conservatives on the radio and TV will be doing it again, following Bush's speech. I know this sounds crazy, but it's another way to attack Social Security! Yep, that's right. If you can bring down the person most identified with it at every turn you can attack everything attached to that person. Of course, this is the same reason Bush changed the rules regarding Presidential Papers when he got into office, and we haven't seen word one of what Ronald Reagan did.

Nice country. Nice leader. Nice puppet.

Blame America First Crowd!!!

Listen, I didn't believe it when I read it but it seems George W. Bush has become part of the BLAME AMERICA FIRSTERS!!!

Don't get too excited because afterall he wasn't actually taking responsibility for anything, but rather, he was just blaming ROOSEVELT!

I have so much to say about this, but every time I'm about to write it I just keep reading more stupidity since he left on Friday.

He is doing what conservatives have hoped for years, and that is to blame Roosevelt. Hey, I guess once your tar on Foreign Policy dismantling his social programs will be that much easier. I'm sure talk radio's finest jackasses will be comparing Stalin and Roosevelt all day tomorrow.

Can't wait for that!

I'm going to sit out for the night and come back in the morning because I'm still trying to put yesterday's Kentucky Derby Party behind me. Reading was tough enough.

Which reminds me, "Cheers to Giacamo!" Aiko, Aiko!

A Reporters Take

On Iraq, and what we should be asking.

:)

I don't know why this is so funny to me:

The president pointedly said, "The United States has free and peaceful nations to the north and south of us" and "we do not consider ourselves to be encircled."

Did you know that if you don't support George W. Bush you don't support freedom? Just digressing.