I'm Not a Betting Man

But if I had to bet, I'd say Karl Rove planted the box.

"Be afraid...be very afraid."

Btw, I got UCLA, Texas, UCONN, Ohio St.

UCONN beating UCLA in the Final: 76-68

Time for Change

It's about that time of the season when you'll hear Republicans talking about "balancing the budget" and "runaway spending."

I think Rush Limbaugh said it best after he was busted with pharma-heroin: "My message still stands. Don't do what I do, but rather what I say."

The Senate voted narrowly today to raise the national debt limit to nearly $9 trillion, averting what would have been the first default ever on United States Treasury notes and giving Democrats an opportunity to portray Republicans as reckless with the people's money.

The 52-to-48 vote, with all Democrats and a handful of Republicans voting "no," increased the debt limit by $781 billion. The increase was the fourth since President Bush took office, prompting Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic minority leader, to declare that "years of Republican mismanagement" have driven the nation deep into the red.

"Any objective analysis of our country's fiscal history would have to conclude this administration and this rubberstamping Republican Congress are the most fiscally irresponsible in the history of our country," Mr. Reid said. "In fact, no other president or Congress even comes close."

The beat goes on.

The Good Ole Days

Remember 3 years ago when the Iraq War began? Niggaz were gettin blasted! Some were shocked; others awed. Those really were great times.

Soon there after the mission was accomplished.

U.S. forces, joined by Iraqi troops, on Thursday launched the largest airborne assault since the U.S.-led invasion, targeting insurgent strongholds north of the capital, the military said.

The military said the operation was aimed at clearing ''a suspected insurgent operating area'' northeast of Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, and was expected to continue over several days.

Oh for the Goodle Days...

:)

We have a President who likes to break things!

Don't worry, son. Daddy will buy you a new one...

Such Pansies

There best be a chorus of Democrats defending Senator Russ Feingold on principle. To allow the Republicans to announce that "this is a political ploy," or that he's "running for President," without defending him is absurd.

This party disagrees about so many ways to handle different issues. But at the end of the day, defend this fucking guy against hacks like Senator Frist, who himself is running for President, and changes with the wind. He has the right to say this about Feingold?

Please, if you're not going to defend your own who in the world would ever want to run along side of you?

Riiiiight

Remember last week when Mr. Independence, Chuck Hagel was this guy?

The Republicans were miffed that Rockefeller, the committee's ranking Democrat, had portrayed them as caving in to White House pressure.

On Tuesday, Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska and another author of the proposal, called that notion "laughable." Hagel said he and Senators DeWine and Snowe were "three of the most independent Republicans" in the Senate and added, "I have never been accused of buckling to White House pressure."

Well, it's a whole new week.

LIKE THE CAVALRY RUSHING to the aid of the wrong troops, four Republican senators who had earlier declared battle against the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping have now proposed to give the surveillance program five years of near-bulletproof protection.

The new measure by Mike DeWine of Ohio, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Olympia Snowe of Maine would significantly expand the administration's power to intercept U.S. citizens' international phone calls and e-mails without obtaining a warrant — even when they have not been implicated in any crime. It also would let the surveillance continue with much less oversight than Congress demanded in previous laws.

As this editorial points out, Congress is more concerned with their own oversight than they are the actual laws. Granted, so many judges are political hacks in their own right, but I would prefer a judge's decision over the uber-hacks in Congress anytime. Judges who are not worried about getting re-elected.

If America is lucky enough to see the Democrats take control of one branch of government, shit is going to hit the fan. I worry they won't even know what to do with the power.

With Regards to Everything

This is the issue:

Although the Justice Department said it doesn't want any personal information now, the victory would likely encourage far more invasive requests in the future, said University of Connecticut law professor Paul Schiff Berman, who specializes in Internet law.

''The erosion of privacy tends to happen incrementally,'' Berman said. ''While no one intrusion may seem that big, over the course of the next decade or two, you might end up in a place as a society where you never thought you would be.''

I don't think my phone is being tapped. It's the steady erosion of rights and laws that concerns me, and should you.

Love This Guy

It's a little thing called LYING:

President Bush vowed for the first time yesterday to turn over most of Iraq to newly trained Iraqi troops by the end of this year, setting a specific benchmark as he kicked off a fresh drive to reassure Americans alarmed by the recent burst of sectarian violence.

Bush, who until now has resisted concrete timelines as the Iraq war dragged on longer than he expected, outlined the target in the first of a series of speeches intended to lay out his strategy for victory. While acknowledging grim developments on the ground, Bush declared "real progress" in standing up Iraqi forces capable of defending their nation.

"As more capable Iraqi police and soldiers come on line, they will assume responsibility for more territory with the goal of having the Iraqis control more territory than the coalition by the end of 2006," he said in a speech to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. "And as Iraqis take over more territory, this frees American and coalition forces to concentrate on training and on hunting down high-value targets like the terrorist [Abu Musab al-] Zarqawi and his associates."

The president made no commitments about withdrawing U.S. troops, but he repeated his general formula that Americans could come home as Iraqis eventually take over the fight.

Okay, you don't like the word "lying?" We'll call it something else: BULLSHIT.

The President could never outline a timeline on the way into the war. An exit strategy made no sense, according to his folk. But now, when things are really bad, he can give you an idea.

On the way in when the cheerleaders had their pom poms in the air an exit strategy wasn't needed. Polls were high. The longer this went on the better the President's numbers. If an arbitrary date passed it would look bad, so there just was no doubt.

Now there's a better idea, "by the end of the year." Because now it doesn't matter to him. The Iraq War kills his poll numbers, so there's nothing he's going to do to make it worse for himself. Now there's a date. Now there's a timeline.

When they do pull out, and things deteriorate, Republicans will say, "Hey, we gave them a chance...they need to take personal responsibility." I can already hear it.

Getting Warmer...

I'm glad emission controls is an optional thing for industry.

Silly Saddam

He should have realized ages ago that Bush didn't/doesn't care about other peoples' children dying:

The United States was seen as a lesser threat, mostly because Mr. Hussein believed that Washington could not accept significant casualties. In the 1991 war, the United States had no intention of taking Baghdad. President George H. W. Bush justified the restraint as prudent to avoid the pitfalls of occupying Iraq, but Mr. Hussein concluded that the United States was fearful of the military cost.