my morning routine

is getting up, starting the coffee maker, sittin on the head, coming back to my desk with a cup of coffee, and start reading the papers.

the globe gazette
the des moines register
slate's today's papers
democratic underground
checking the weather
finding out what's on tv (not really, i'm jus reading my link bar)

dear LORD, how do they expect people to be helped by this?

it's the settings panel for the new aol 9.0 optimized.

there's gotta be a hundred and eleven different items available to 'set' and would you believe it, not one is what i want. cancel account. nope not in there.

surprise surprise

an entry to my diary:

%1007%
well, i'm shocked, to the point of being frozen for 5 minutes. i mean, shocked!!!.... i changd my password on vonage. going through all the steps it takes to accomplish the task, and end up remembering to put it into azz cardfile. well, i opened THAT file, and punched in vonage expecting to see my account as i had it prior to the password change, and guess what i see? the way it is AFTER hte password change. wow.

complete with spelling error.

in PLAME-gate....

another area that i'm really not as interested in as i could, or should be i guess. there's no doubt in my mind rove is behind it all. why it's taking such a circuitous route to attaining that conclusion is beyond me.

Both the WP and the NYT report on a memo from NYT Executive Editor Bill Keller to his staff. The WP runs the headline, "A Split Between The Times & Miller" and emphasizes that Bill Keller accused Judith Miller of misleading the newspaper's Washington bureau chief. In covering itself, the NYT runs the headline "Times Editor Expresses Regrets Over Handling of Leak Case," noting that Keller wished he had "sat her down for a thorough debriefing." Miller misled the Times, Keller said, in her response when she was asked if she was one of the Washington journalists told that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA. The WP calls the memo "the first public split between Miller and the management."

the obligatory blub about it in today's papers notes that there's a riff between the nytimes and judith miller. frankly at this point, i don't care one way or another. come '08, and things will undoubtedly change. whether they change for the better or not is still the million dollar question. got an answer?

well.

DUH.

FARPOINT.FACTOID

i never knew that. in reading about the levees in new orleans and katrina's obliveration of one of 'em, it's interesting how they're slamming past practices on the levee now that katrina showed what mother nature is capable of doing.

Whereas most public-safety structures are designed to last 10,000 years, the levees were designed to last 50 or 100.

--source

and later in today's papers, they talk about harriet miers again. this time they point out the most obvious aspect to the whole thing, one that obviously missed the MAINSTREAM press:

"... Miers misunderstands "equal protection," say the experts, since, "There is no proportional representation requirement under the Equal Protection clause." The White House says she was referring to the "one person, one vote" rule, in which case, the scholars say, she misused the phrase "proportional representation." Either way, they are surprised the White House didn't fact-check Miers' work before forwarding it to the Senate."

THAT'S BECAUSE BUSHITE PEOPLE DON'T KNOW THE WORD W-O-R-K

Letter of The Day

i had to weigh three letters today, and picked this one as the best. the url provides a link to the other two. all three are from iowa (surprise surprise)

Regarding "A Call to Action on Science" (Oct. 17 editorial): I do basic research in physics and lately have trouble finding university funds to support even one physics student doing novel research. Our country spends nearly $1 billion per day fighting wars, equivalent to throwing away all three state universities every day.

-John Hauptman, Ames.

attribution

whats worse than having businessmen govern?

when you got BAD BUSINESSmen at the helm.

ever notice the subliminal way the networks try to get over on you?

for instance. shows like e-ring. what a PR bonanza for the pentagon. and then abc couldn't be beat and got herself the highly acclaimed commander in chief. i guess to fight off west wing, which still hasn't made up its mind which way it's going.

but just where is cbs in all this access?

huh?

from the voices in my head department

ever think of sounds as being a reflection of time?

think now, sounds only tell you where you are in the timeline, not where everybody else IS, simply because nobody can occupy the same timeline at the same time. i think. there's sound. it travels. it gets picked up by you, you think. where does it decay?

deLay WATCH

his arrest warrant:
http://democraticleader.house.gov/pdf/Delay.pdf

it just gets better everytime i push the keyboard away, something new and fresh keeps coming up.

and when they eat their own?

Vice-President Dick Cheney and a handful of others had hijacked the government's foreign policy apparatus, deciding in secret to carry out policies that had left the US weaker and more isolated in the world, the top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell claimed on Wednesday.

In a scathing attack on the record of President George W. Bush, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Mr Powell until last January, said: “What I saw was a cabal between the vice-president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made.

--source

*GIGGLE*

hey NBC:

i'm watching e-ring, and all i could think of .... why would nbc embarass itself with this rubbish? what's even more disheartening is the fact that they ruin the reputation of our military with their cheap theatrics. our men & women in uniform deserve better.

you'll know when they got their heads so far up their asses

that they are unwilling to accept the truth, even when presented with video to the contrary.

The military announced two Marines were killed Monday in Iraq. The military also stuck by its story that it killed insurgents in Ramadi. "We have no indications that the allegations of civilian casualties is accurate," said a spokesman. (The APhas video of children apparently killed in the airstrikes.)

--source

so bush KNEW!!!

WASHINGTON - An angry President Bush rebuked chief political guru Karl Rove two years ago for his role in the Valerie Plame affair, sources told the Daily News.

"He made his displeasure known to Karl," a presidential counselor told The News. "He made his life miserable about this."

--NY DAILY NEWS

i really REALLY need to get one of these

Roland HP237R

warrant issued for tom delay

i can barely contain myself.

AUSTIN, Texas -- A Texas court Wednesday issued a warrant for Rep. Tom DeLay, ordering him to appear at the Fort Bend County jail for booking on state conspiracy and money laundering charges

--source

democrat or republican?

When those we have elected to public office who represent our chosen political party have disappointed us, we need to remember that it is the party principles that demand our loyalty and not the ones who have failed us.

-Lenora D. Wohlenhaus, Atlantic.
--source

hmmm, are they in bed now?

usatoday & new york times, are they in bed together now? they both seem to be following the same script.

USAT and the NYT front pieces on Saddam's coming trial, which starts tomorrow and is expected to adjourn hours later for at least a few weeks. The NYT's John Burns highlights complaints about "the fairness and competence of the court." The judges aren't experienced, and more importantly, they're being pushed around by politicians eager to get the trial on.

--today's papers

and this is why the times has become just another rag

Both USAT and NYT emphasize the military's position. "U.S. Hits Suspected Militants in Western Iraq," announces USAT. But what's interesting is that the Times, while weighting its story toward the military, is also the only paper with a Ramadi dateline. Given that the NYT quotes only a U.S. commander—and no Iraqis—TP suspects the reporter was traveling or embedded with the military. Nothing wrong with that. But if it's the case, the reporter should tell readers.

the new york times has lost her glory as a shining beacon of hope, truth, and the American way. she has become a whore to war, lies, and terror.

who would you believe?

BAGHDAD, Oct. 17 -- A U.S. fighter jet bombed a crowd gathered around a burned Humvee on the edge of a provincial capital in western Iraq, killing 25 people, including 18 children, hospital officials and family members said Monday. The military said the Sunday raid targeted insurgents planting a bomb for new attacks.

The U.S. military said it killed a total of 70 insurgents in Sunday's airstrikes and, in a statement, said it knew of no civilian deaths.

--WaPo

i know who i would believe. the very fact that there's video of the children in their coffins, proves that the pentagon has run amok, and afoul with their intended purpose. this terrorism of innocents must stop.

and finally, this one gets it

Does anyone else find it frustrating, perhaps cynical, that one of the qualifications for a Bush-administration Supreme Court nominee is the absence of a history of judicial decisions?

-Neil Hernan, Osage.

attribution

Letter of the WeeQ

did we have a winner yesterday? i can't remember. either way, this one's also a winner.

In Robert F. Anderson's Oct. 10 letter, "Favorite Myths," he opines about alleged inaccuracies in the Register's reporting on the Iraq war. Anderson pleads with us to check the facts. I did.

1. Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction. Truth: In August 1995, Gen. Hussein Kamel, the former director of Iraq's weapons program, defected and was interviewed by U.N. weapons inspectors. He stated categorically that Iraq destroyed its WMD after the first Gulf War.

On three separate occasions President Bush and members of his administration cited this same source as confirming the existence of WMD in Iraq. Not exactly honest.

2. It's about oil. Truth: Anderson claims that if it were really about oil, we could have just done business with Saddam Hussein. Well, we did. Vice President Dick Cheney, as president of Halliburton, sold $73 million of oil equipment to Saddam using shady subsidiaries. Now, after the war, Halliburton doesn't just get to sell equipment to the Iraqi oil industry, it gets to run the whole show.

3. Tax cuts cause deficits. Truth: In government accounting, it's budget imbalances that cause deficits, not just spending. Tax cuts are properly thought of as tax expenditures. Forgone revenue is functionally equivalent to an equal amount of spending.

The idea that massive tax cuts will in the long run create more economic growth relies on highly dubious voodoo economics.

I suggest we all take a more critical view of the "facts."

-Lucas Forte, Iowa City.

attribution

Letter Of The Day

Richard Doak, referring to the Swift Boat Veterans ads attacking John Kerry's Vietnam War service, asked if anyone knows any mechanism that might be used to penalize campaign falsehoods other than an occasional libel suit? I do. It's called a free press.

Newspapers such as the Des Moines Register have a responsibility to the American people to investigate and expose the smear campaigns, the half-truths and the distortions that come from both the left and the right that are polarizing American politics.

Doak resents the fact that there is no mechanism for punishing a campaign liar. How about the Register doing its job by printing the truth on its front page and in bold headlines rather than mindlessly repeating baseless allegations as if the allegations were news?

If the American media were doing its job, the smear campaigns of these groups would backfire because the truth would be reported rather than the allegation.

I agree with Doak that something is needed to raise the level of political discourse. How about a media that has the courage to use its power to expose the lies, half-truths and innuendoes before the election is over?

-Rodney Drenkow, Waverly.

attribution

finally got it

a way of expressing how i feel without being a bitch.

take aol. we all hate aol, dont we.
but last week i decided to try the 3 month free trial, which God willing, will not end up being a 6 month nightmare. that AOL would continue to put 'try aol' icons on my desktop everytime i install one of their tools, pretty much tells you how good aol software is.

i really am going in this with an open mind. just as i did with msn premium. which i run side-by-side with you-know-what.

i shuld hunt down trillian. i had a pd version at one time, but gave up on it simply because i don't use IM. but i spoze i can give it a shot for the winter and see what happens. and i really do wanna keep an open heart when it comes to evaluating the two top services on the planet. i'll be sure to share my feelings.

what does that say about the scandal that wasn't?

THE Army officer in charge of investigating abuse of civilians by British forces in Iraq has been found dead, it was revealed yesterday.

Royal Military Police Captain Ken Masters, 40, is believed to have killed himself. His body was found on Saturday evening.

[i always get a kick out of the military declaring 'believed to have killed himself' so early. can't they tell for sure right away or do they really need that 48 hour window they ususally attach to cases like this?]

An army colleague is said to have made the grim discovery in Waterloo Lines camp within the main British military base at Basra airport.

Ministry of Defence sources said last night it is not believed Capt Masters had left a suicide note and it is not yet known how he died. No firearms are believed to have been involved.

[so the subject just gets dropped.]

The married father-of-two is not believed to have been suffering from depression, mental illness or physical injury and had not been due to appear as a witness in any cases relating to mistreatment.

Capt Masters, who had served with the Royal Military Police since 1981, was commissioned from the ranks in 2001.

--source

think it was just a coincidence?

i would ask that you think again. why are they keeping ther cause in such a cloud? who benefits most from a cloudy death? especially one surrounding one of the dirtiest scandals to have ever hit the United States of America.

little by little, they are finding out

what we knew allll along, that bush is bad for America. period.

Pessimism over the war in Iraq and skepticism about the economy at home have cost President Bush support among the most reliable segments of Illinois Republicans, a Tribune/WGN-TV poll shows, and now nearly 6 out of 10 voters statewide disapprove of his job performance.

The government's tepid response to Hurricane Katrina and a summer-long spike in gasoline prices also have helped drive Bush's job-approval rating down to 33 percent in the state, the lowest point among Illinois surveys involving his administration. A similar poll in May showed Bush's approval rating at 41 percent.

Support for Bush has dropped 14 points in the last year among Republicans, and GOP officials fear that could complicate their efforts in next year's races for Congress and governor. For the first time in his presidency, half the voters in Chicago's Republican-rich collar counties disapprove of Bush's job performance, a departure from last fall when he carried all five suburban counties.

attribution

to get an idea of how corrupt washington has become

under republican control:

Abramoff quietly arranged for eLottery to pay conservative, anti-gambling activists to help in the firm's $2 million pro-gambling campaign, including Ralph Reed, former head of the Christian Coalition, and the Rev. Louis P. Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition. Both kept in close contact with Abramoff about the arrangement, e-mails show. Abramoff also turned to prominent anti-tax conservative Grover Norquist, arranging to route some of eLottery's money for Reed through Norquist's group, Americans for Tax Reform.

--WaPo

on PLAME-GATE

this blurb from today's papers pretty much sums up all i know of the case:

The NYT off-leads, the WP fronts, and the LAT goes inside with the latest on Judith Miller's grand jury testimony. The NYT published two stories on Miller (the stories went up on the paper's Web site on Saturday)—one written by three staff writers (the off-lead) and one written by Miller herself (stuffed). As the WP and LAT note, the NYT off-lead is less than kind to Miller. According to her own paper, Miller was a "divisive newsroom figure" who many refused to work with, and who was permitted to run "amok" with littler editorial supervision. As the WP also notes, the NYT article and Miller's piece contain "conflicting accounts" of why Miller never wrote a story about the outing of CIA covert operative Valerie Plame. Miller claims she strongly recommended pursuing the story to her editor but was told not to write one. The NYT Washington bureau chief at the time said Miller made no such recommendation. When asked by another editor if she was one of six reporters who'd gotten leaked info from the White House on Plame, Miller said no. According to the NYT off-lead, by backing Miller's refusal to name her source, the paper turned the Miller case "into a cause," incurred whopping legal fees, and limited "its own ability to cover aspects of one of the biggest scandals of the day." An article on the leak by other reporters never ran, and a memo on the leak's coverage "went nowhere"—possibly to protect Miller.

As for Miller, although the words "Valerie Flame" showed up in the same notebook she used when interviewing Scooter Libby two days after Plame's husband publicly denounced the White House, Miller maintains Libby never revealed the agent's name; she doesn't recall who gave her Plame's name. Miller did testify that Libby told her Wilson's wife was an operative for Winpac—the CIA bureau for weapons intelligence, nonproliferation, and arms control.

one has to not be a mind-reader to get that this stool-pigeon for the bushites, judith miller, was a bushite herself through and through. nobody got along with her, which speaks volumes about her credibility. that the new york times turned her into a cause celeb shows just how off-track from being a beacon of freedom the grey lady has become.

Letter of the WeeQ

Having read the Register's Oct. 9 editorial, I'm not sure who is more irresponsible, Congressman Steve King or The Des Moines Register.

To suggest that King has morphed into an ultra conservative ideologue is not only fiction, it is irresponsible journalism. King has and I suspect will always be a right-wing conservative who has consistently put his persona and ego before the needs of the district he is supposed to represent. To his credit, King has changed very little. He just has a bigger stage to espouse his tiresome and unproductive political rhetoric.

Notwithstanding this, the Register should be ashamed of itself for endorsing King in the first place. Moreover, to suggest that King turned out to be "a different guy than we endorsed" begs the question: What kind of due diligence was conducted to endorse him in the first place? One would hope that the editorial staff would carefully scrutinize the credentials, political leanings and ultimately the potential for effectively representing his or her district as well as the state of Iowa. Apparently not.

Although I cannot argue with the theme of the editorial - King should in fact be replaced — the broader question for me is what the Register is doing to examine its own process for making an endorsement. Perhaps there should be an equally compelling call to replace the people who made the endorsement in the first place.

Finally, I hope it has not gotten lost on the editorial staff, that by clearly ignoring your responsibility as a fact-finding and reporting entity, you have not only undermined the value (if any) of your endorsements but the overall credibility of the paper itself.

-Christopher P. Covill, Van Meter.

attribution

well, i couldn't have said it better myself. thank you chris!

Letter Of The Day

comes from my hometown newspaper.

By EDGAR DOROW, Osage

The U.S. Senate is set to cut $574 million from the food stamp program as a cost-saving measure, taking critical nutrition support from thousands of families, many of them working. The Senate is also set to pass $70 billion in tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans,which is 122 times as much as the food stamp “savings.”

Who is at the public trough here?

I can’t believe that our senators would support either measure; if they do, it is further evidence that wealth runs the government for its own benefits, not for the majority of the people in this democracy.

attribution