from the "well DUH" desk

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush on Saturday acknowledged problems in the start of the new Medicare prescription drug benefit for the elderly but said the government was working to fix them. In his weekly radio address, he also insisted the program was a "good deal" for seniors and encouraged more to sign up.

--source

Quote of the Day

"Its not illegal to be lobbied, and hell, we couldn't do our jobs if we didn't interact with them. Legislation/regulation/oversight can't be done solely by Google research. What is illegal is to go out of your way, and use your position, as quid pro quo for gifts, jobs, and campaign contributions. The vast majority of Democratic staffers work on the Hill, despite the miserable pay and long hours, to try to achieve some measure of good. Many, many Republican staffers- convinced that government is an evil- work here in order to make money off that necessary evil. That breeds corruption. When you have a majority of members and staffers that could care less about policy ad governing and more about power/influence/money/profit Abramoff is inevitable. When the hard, tedious work of legislating and oversight is done by people motivated by careerism rather than professionalism not only do you have Abramoff, but you have Michael Brown, Halliburton, and illegal NSA wiretapping."
--a senior democratic hill staffer

attribution

what did i tell ya?

me and a host of other lefties said this was how it was, and sure enough, libby's giving us proof.

Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, testified to a federal grand jury that he had been "authorized" by Cheney and other White House "superiors" in the summer of 2003 to disclose classified information to journalists to defend the Bush administration's use of prewar intelligence in making the case to go to war with Iraq, according to attorneys familiar with the matter, and to court records.

--national journal

corporate greed visualized

watch the video in the 2nd story down

http://www.wxyz.com/wxyz/ys_investigations/0,2132,WXYZ_15949,00.html

how faux and cnn are in bed with each other

they have the same mentality. edit out what you don't want people to hear & see, then they're lying eyes will have no chance at decieving what they are about to be told.

frankly, they disgust me.

http://mediamatters.org/items/200602090006

so mehlyman doesn't believe democrats can keep us safe

maybe he forgot that it was on a REPUBLICAN WATCH when 9/11 happened.

oh, and wanted to copy these talking points to counter any reich-wing sassing i encounter:

• bin Laden still free
• Iraq now a terrorist breeding ground
• every year since 9-11 the # of terrorist attacks has gone up
• Red China now owns the note on the USA
• Our military has been wasted for nothing
• 55 returning vets from Iraq are running as Dems.
• bush is losing the war on terror

JACK WATCH

i think i'm gonna start a new thread, called JACK WATCH. it will be of all things jack abramoff.

today's first up:

Two of the elected officials referred to in Friday's filings have been identified in published reports as Reps. Steven LaTourette, R-Ohio, and Don Young, R-Alaska. According to Roll Call, a Capitol Hill newspaper, the two representatives wrote to the GSA in September 2002, urging the agency to give preferential treatment to groups such as Indian tribes when evaluating development proposals for the Old Post Office.

Friday's filings by prosecutors refer to a third member of Congress, Rep. Shelly Moore Capito, R-W.Va. Her name appears in e-mails that suggest she was trying to help Abramoff secure a GSA lease for land in Silver Spring for a religious school.

the headline that isn't a story

Dad Slams Attack On Bush At King Rite

and the thread that is making me proud to be an American

in other words.... HE LIED

Ex-C.I.A. Official Says Iraq Data Was Distorted

today's MUST READ

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-charities11feb11,0,5568579.story?coll=la-home-headlines

it's nothing but a bunch of BULL SHIT

"As the West Coast plot shows, in the war on terror, we face a relentless and determined enemy," said Bushwhat a crock. if they were that relentless and determined, they would have crossed into our country through mexico mingled with millions of mexicans.

thank God for computers

boy, oh boy. i had made a number of posts (a whole lot of 'em), to the wrong blog. so for the last 2 hours, i've been sitting here on the laptop (for reasons to be explained below) trying to set things right. iow, get the right posts to the right blog, at the right time/date, and be left about it all.

for reaons unknown, there does not exist in the confines of etco's programming a way of transferring posts already made to another blog. that should be as easy as drag and drop, especially when the software deals with the web.

so i had to fire up zoundry, the old windows program that i used in the beginnings of poop, to do my posting. it was fast, easy, and within reach of being capable of capturing those fleeting thoughts of fancy. it does a good job, there's just not a mac equivalent. so on the mac i have to use etco, and it's fine. about the same caliber as zoundry. there's probably a lot more pros and cons about these programs, i just use them for those times when i really want to preserve whatever space i was occupying at the time. and blogging allows that.

today's MUST READ

http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/3/2006/1294

and a point that shouldn't go unnoticed\

In a NYT op-ed, CIA Director Porter Goss inveighs against leaks. "The terrorists gain an edge when they keep their secrets and we don't keep ours." He might want to e-mail the piece to his bosses ...

... because as the LAT fronts, and everybody else reports, former vice presidential aide Scooter Libby has testified he was "authorized by his superiors" to leak a classified intel report about Iraq.

is cherry-picking intel to go to war....

the same as lying to the American people about the necessity for war?

you decide

Summary: During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, writes the intelligence community's former senior analyst for the Middle East, the Bush administration disregarded the community's expertise, politicized the intelligence process, and selected unrepresentative raw intelligence to make its public case.

PAUL R. PILLAR is on the faculty of the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University. Concluding a long career in the Central Intelligence Agency, he served as National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005..

and then there was katrina

i've always maintained that bush will suffer the effects of katrina.

and sure enough, kudos to the nytimes who posted lots of emails and documents

it's nothing but a bunch of BULL SHIT

"As the West Coast plot shows, in the war on terror, we face a relentless and determined enemy," said Bushwhat a crock. if they were that relentless and determined, they would have crossed into our country through mexico mingled with millions of mexicans.

oh and more from today's papers:

The NYTdoesn't give the impression that the claims are questionable. But the WP says there's "deep disagreement within the intelligence community" over whether the plot was "ever much more than talk." The LAT takes an even dimmer view of the picture the president drew. Speaking about the purported plot, a U.S. counterterrorism "official" told the paper, "It didn't go. It didn't happen."

That would jibe with what some insiders said after Bush alluded last fall to the plot. A counterterrorism official told the Post back then, "It's safe to say that most of the [intel] community doesn't think it's worth very much." And the LAT cited "senior law enforcement officials" who "said authorities have not disrupted any operational terrorist plot within the United States" since 9/11." so there ya have it. BUSH IS BUSHIT.

could this be really true?

Researchers, including a BYU scientist, believe they have found a new compound that could finally kill the HIV/AIDS virus, not just slow it down as current treatments do.

And, unlike the expensive, drug cocktails 25 years of research have produced for those with the deadly virus, the compound invented by Paul D. Savage of Brigham Young University appears to hunt down and kill HIV.

Although so far limited to early test tube studies, CSA-54, one of a family of compounds called Ceragenins (or CSAs), mimics the disease-fighting characteristics of anti-microbial and anti-viral agents produced naturally by a healthy human immune system.

Under a study sponsored by Ceragenix Pharmaceuticals, Savage and his colleagues developed and synthesized the compound for Vanderbilt University's School of Medicine. In his Nashville, Tenn., laboratories, Derya Unutmaz, an associate professor of Microbiology and Immunology, tested several CSAs for their ability to kill HIV.

While issuing a cautious caveat about his early results, Unutmaz acknowledged Monday that CSAs could be the breakthrough HIV/AIDS researchers have sought for so long.

--source

and lastly, iran follows the bush lead

... then there is Iran's Commerce Ministry, which has learned a thing or two from Congress. The ministry, as the NYT notes, "called for changing the name of Danish pastry to that of a flower named after Muhammad."

--from today's papers

this is how you fight terrorism

WITH THE LAW. from the new york times:

a jury in Britain convicted the country's best-known radical cleric on charges of incitement and promoting racial hatred. Abu Hamza al-Masri was not accused of being connected to specific acts of violence. Rather, as the judge put it, he's getting seven years hard time for having "created an atmosphere" in which murder was taken to be "not only a legitimate course but a moral and religious duty in pursuit of perceived justice." Al-Qaida men Richard Reid and Zacarias Moussaoui both hung out at Masri's mosque.

sssssh, don't tell a soul

Bush 2007 budget quietly omits impact of policies on deficit

--source

what's up with the whitehouse lately?

they're shifting all over the place:

The Los Angeles Times leads and others go inside with the White House doing a sudden switch and agreeing to brief congressional committees on some details of the warrantless spying.

and

The Washington Post leads with, and nobody else fronts, President Bush boldly stating that the violent anticartoon protests are bad. It was his first public statement on the issue. The last time the administration made significant comments was on Friday when the State Department condemned ... the cartoons. The WP describes Bush's comments as part of "a shift in White House strategy."

they lied again

The Post fronts a frankly confusing piece saying that the warrantless spying might have been used to get national security warrants, a move the administration had promised top judges on the national security court wouldn't happen. Worried that the spying might be unconstitutional, the judges insisted that the snooping, in the Post's wording, "not form the basis for obtaining a warrant."

Joke of the Day

as someone else said, it's an emanuel goldstein plot from a deluded dictator.

US President George W Bush has detailed what he said was a foiled al-Qaeda plot to fly a commercial airliner into the tallest building on the US west coast.

Mr Bush said the plotters, detailed in 2002, planned to use shoe bombs to storm the plane cockpit.

The attackers wanted to fly the plane into Library Tower in Los Angeles, California, renamed the US Bank Tower.

Mr Bush said al-Qaeda recruited the militant Islamic group Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) to carry out the attack.

Arrests

The president said the alleged mastermind of the September 11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was behind the west coast plot.

Mr Bush said that instead of using hijackers of Arab origin, as in the attacks on New York and Washington, Sheikh Mohammed recruited "young men from South East Asia whom he believed would not arouse as much suspicion".

Planning began in October 2001, but it was derailed in early 2002 "when a South East Asian nation arrested a key al-Qaeda operative", Mr Bush said.

It was finally thwarted in the summer of 2003, when the suspected head of JI, an Indonesian known as Hambali, was arrested in Thailand.

The Bush administration disclosed the existence of the plot last October, saying it was among 10 disrupted al-Qaeda plots.

--bbc

what really pisses me off about the bushites

is that they feel they have to infiltrate every ounce of government there is, and corrupt it.

Louis Fisher, a 36-year veteran of the agency and an expert on the separation of powers, said his superiors wrongly punished him for giving interviews and publishing scholarly articles under his own name that contained criticism of the White House. Top officials deny those allegations, saying they were simply trying to protect the agency's reputation for nonpartisanship and objectivity.

The dispute has thrust the research service, a branch of the Library of Congress, into a debate about whether the Bush administration is trying to control the flow of information to lawmakers and the public. Earlier in the week, a political appointee resigned from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration after coming under fire for limiting access to an expert on global warming. The White House also faces accusations that it misled lawmakers about the true cost of the new Medicare drug benefit.

--source

so all this shit coming out as "proof" ...

was gleened from prisoners who were tortured.

so says cbs news.

what really pisses me off about the bushites

is that they feel they have to infiltrate every ounce of government there is, and corrupt it.

Louis Fisher, a 36-year veteran of the agency and an expert on the separation of powers, said his superiors wrongly punished him for giving interviews and publishing scholarly articles under his own name that contained criticism of the White House. Top officials deny those allegations, saying they were simply trying to protect the agency's reputation for nonpartisanship and objectivity.

The dispute has thrust the research service, a branch of the Library of Congress, into a debate about whether the Bush administration is trying to control the flow of information to lawmakers and the public. Earlier in the week, a political appointee resigned from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration after coming under fire for limiting access to an expert on global warming. The White House also faces accusations that it misled lawmakers about the true cost of the new Medicare drug benefit.

--source

Joke of the Day

as someone else said, it's an emanuel goldstein plot from a deluded dictator.

US President George W Bush has detailed what he said was a foiled al-Qaeda plot to fly a commercial airliner into the tallest building on the US west coast.

Mr Bush said the plotters, detailed in 2002, planned to use shoe bombs to storm the plane cockpit.

The attackers wanted to fly the plane into Library Tower in Los Angeles, California, renamed the US Bank Tower.

Mr Bush said al-Qaeda recruited the militant Islamic group Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) to carry out the attack.

Arrests

The president said the alleged mastermind of the September 11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was behind the west coast plot.

Mr Bush said that instead of using hijackers of Arab origin, as in the attacks on New York and Washington, Sheikh Mohammed recruited "young men from South East Asia whom he believed would not arouse as much suspicion".

Planning began in October 2001, but it was derailed in early 2002 "when a South East Asian nation arrested a key al-Qaeda operative", Mr Bush said.

It was finally thwarted in the summer of 2003, when the suspected head of JI, an Indonesian known as Hambali, was arrested in Thailand.

The Bush administration disclosed the existence of the plot last October, saying it was among 10 disrupted al-Qaeda plots.
--bbc

in an effort to keep the story alive

WASHINGTON - Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and House Speaker Dennis Hastert engineered a backroom legislative maneuver to protect pharmaceutical companies from lawsuits, say witnesses to the pre-Christmas power play.

The language was tucked into a Defense Department appropriations bill at the last minute without the approval of members of a House-Senate conference committee, say several witnesses, including a top Republican staff member.
...
Beyond the issue of vaccine liability protection, some say going around the longstanding practice of bipartisan House-Senate conference committees' working out compromises on legislation is a dangerous power grab by Republican congressional leaders that subverts democracy.

"It is a travesty of the legislative process," said Thomas Mann, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

"It vests enormous power in the hands of congressional leaders and private interests, minimizes transparency and denies legitimate opportunities for all interested parties, in Congress and outside, to weigh in on important policy questions."

-source

will they ever get there?

The NYT off-leads word that about half the promised trailer homes for Katrina evacuees have yet to be delivered.

they lied again

The Post fronts a frankly confusing piece saying that the warrantless spying might have been used to get national security warrants, a move the administration had promised top judges on the national security court wouldn't happen. Worried that the spying might be unconstitutional, the judges insisted that the snooping, in the Post's wording, "not form the basis for obtaining a warrant."

--source

what's up with the whitehouse lately?

they're shifting all over the place:

The Los Angeles Times leads and others go inside with the White House doing a sudden switch and agreeing to brief congressional committees on some details of the warrantless spying.and

The Washington Post leads with, and nobody else fronts, President Bush boldly stating that the violent anticartoon protests are bad. It was his first public statement on the issue. The last time the administration made significant comments was on Friday when the State Department condemned ... the cartoons. The WP describes Bush's comments as part of "a shift in White House strategy."

now THERE's an idea i can get behind

Johnson County's top lawman urged state lawmakers Wednesday to decrease the criminal penalties for possessing a small amount of marijuana, a move that would essentially make penalties for such an offense comparable to getting a speeding ticket.

Sheriff Lonny Pulkrabek suggested decreasing the crime from a serious misdemeanor to a simple misdemeanor and for a violation to result in a ticket.

The effect of such a change would mean that instead of getting booked at the county jail and possibly spending a night in lockup before seeing a judge, a violation probably would result in a fine.

--source

Letter Of The Day

While their companies are on the brink of bankruptcy, Ford Chairman William C. Ford Jr. and GM Chairman Rick Wagoner still don't get it.

Not one time while either of them was waxing eloquent about how they were going to turn their companies around while blasting thousands of Americans into unemployment lines has either of them mentioned cutting excessive executive compensation or building high-quality, trouble-free vehicles.

While my Oldsmobile was sitting at the dealership more than 10 times for an overheating problem, these executives were flitting all over the country, earning $10 million salaries, trying to get us to buy more of their junk.

The dealership never took my complaints seriously until the engine blew with 77,000 miles. I finally sold the car for $600 and was glad to get rid of it. In the two years I have had my Chevy S-10, the repair total is nearly $6,000. All this on a truck with less than 63,000 miles.

It is going to take longer than two years for these two companies to overcome 40 years of poor-quality vehicles.
- Jeffrey Smith, Clive.

attribution

the bushite people are taking over

and there goes competence.

Knight Ridder reports that the State Department has "sidelined key career weapons experts and replaced them with less experienced political appointees." The changes have come during a reorganization of various offices and created something of an uproar among career bureaucrats. "The process has been gravely flawed from the outset, and smacks plainly of a political vendetta against career Foreign Service and Civil Service (personnel) by political appointees," said a "group of employees" in a rare letter of complaint to superiors late last year.

CARTOON WATCH

i think what i'm gonna do is keep track of how much gets blown up with those cartoons of mohammed in a bomb headress. i can't seem to track down the actual cartoon that set everything off, but there seems to be a little war going on.

Danish paper rejected Jesus cartoons
Bush calls Danish PM with support in cartoon row
Muslims picket U.S. newspaper over reprinting of cartoon
Iran paper plans Holocaust cartoons
Four killed in cartoon protests
and that was just on one page over at DU.

try THIS

where will it end?

Dutch Islamists post cartoons depicting Anne Frank, Hitler in bed

i'd say it would be worthy of Quote of the weeQ

from josh marshall:

"This administration reacts to anyone who questions this illegal program by saying that those of us who demand the truth and stand up for our rights and freedoms somehow has a pre-9/11 world view. In fact, the President has a pre-1776 world view. Our government has three branches, not one. And no one, not even the President, is above the law."

That's from Sen. Feingold's post on the Gonzales' testimony that just went up on TPMCafe.

the republicans want to filter everything

ever notice how the only ones wanting to filter something, be it free speech, or free text, are republicans? it's like everything has to be a circle with them. they run in circles, they expect that turn about, and generally just are ignorant otherwise.

Letter Of The Day

George Bush let me down in his State of the Union speech when he talked about Iraq and the detractors about going into the war under the pretext of searching for WMD.

He could not simply admit that he sent us there with info he believed to be correct but turned out not to be, but tried to sound wise with the "hindsight is not wisdom" crack.

We are there now, so we need to do our best to establish a stable and western- friendly Iraq. But no, he cannot admit he was wrong.

And every time he infers that anyone who disagrees with his policy in Iraq is un-American, I want to puke. Disagreeing with our elected officials is about as American as it gets.

We are addicted to oil. As I drive to and from work and to the grocery store and to church on weekends, I revel in my conspicuous consumption (please note sarcasm) as he and his friends get rich off oil. How dare I drive.

He didn't talk about it much but his solution to the health care crisis is for us to use it less. As someone who has a disorder that is not caused by diet or lifestyle and will probably require maintenance medicine until the day I am dandelion fertilizer, I am frightened by his talk.

I voted for George Bush twice. Man, I wish life had do-overs; two is all I would need.

DONALD C. HUGHSTON, Mason City

attribution

the thing about this wiretapping thing?

what else has this administration been up to that we know not of? and perhaps it would be better if we did.

Quote of the Day

“Why did we do that? The only logical answer that comes to mind is they didn’t want to capture Bin Laden because if they captured Bin Laden and wiped out the Taliban, which they could have done at that moment, there would have been no justification for going to war in Iraq, and they wanted to use that as a justification for attacking Iraq."

--(NY)Congressman Maurice Hinchey

attribution

talk about ego manifestation of the highest order

Asked why the White House didn't chat with Congress before it decided to bypass the whole warrant thing, Gonzales said, "The short answer is that we didn't think we needed to, quite frankly."

dictatorships act like that, not democracies.

FARPOINT.FACTOID

another factoid by another letter writer:

According to Business Week, the average CEO in major U.S. companies makes 400 times what the average worker is paid in the same company. That ratio in Europe, according to the same article, is 45 to 1.

a new idea on campaign finance reform?

from letter writer, Helen Ackerson of Keokuk Iowa:

Assuming "legislators who received money say political contributions don't sway their stances on issues" (sure!), then maybe all these generous donors should just put their contributions into a general fund. It could be divided evenly among all congressional or legislative aspirants so each would have a fair chance and time to concentrate on, study and present the real issues.

FARPOINT.FACTOID

When Greenspan took over as federal chairman in 1987, outstanding U.S. debts were near $10 trillion. According to the latest available figures, these same debts now total well over $40 trillion. It now takes more than $2 billion a day from foreign investors to finance our deficits.

--source

i'm going to have to take jeff's word for it since, like he said, the media has been all adulatory with him.

Letter Of The Day

I have never owned a credit card. Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., introduced a bill that would require credit card companies to let you know how long it would take to pay off your credit card debt if you made the minimum payment each month. If the debt is large, probably the rest of your life. The Republican-controlled Congress responded by voting it down and then passing a bill making it much harder to file for bankruptcy. Bush then signed it into law.

I’m sure these congressmen will look you in the eyes and tell you that by making it harder to declare bankruptcy, the banks will in turn lower interest rates on credit cards. This, of course, is after they have been given money by the bank lobbyists. A question you might ask yourself is how many lobbyists do you think work for the poor and the middle class?

Even a good lawyer has a hard time understanding the fine print on a credit card agreement. Credit card interest is legalized loan-sharking. Miss a car loan payment or have a water bill past due and your interest rate on your credit card may soar. Credit card companies love to add on late fees. They hate people who pay the cards on time, calling them freeloaders. If a person is deep in credit card debt, the best thing to do is to see if you can get a bank loan to pay it off. Then take a scissors to the credit card. Eight percent interest is far better than 16 or 30.

Now, if only we could get rid of the best Congress money can buy. Chuck Grassley works, but for whom? Dittos for Jim Nussle and Tom Latham. And what about our state government? Do you think corporate farm lobbyists have any influence over local control of hog lots? Then there is George Bush. Darn, I’m running out of space. In a way, we deserve who we vote for.

--MARK VANHEEL, Mason City

attribution

from the good news dept, and i do mean good news

By a margin of 52% to 43%, Americans want Congress to consider impeaching President Bush if he wiretapped American citizens without a judge's approval, according to a new poll commissioned by AfterDowningStreet.org, a grassroots coalition that supports a Congressional investigation of President Bush's decision to invade Iraq in 2003.

The poll was conducted by Zogby International, the highly-regarded non-partisan polling company. The poll interviewed 1,216 U.S. adults from January 9-12.

--source

wanna bet that we don't see telecom-friendly legislation soon?

USAT reports that AT&T, MCI, and Sprint are cooperating with the NSA's warantless wiretapping program. Anonymous telecom execs confirmed their cooperation, but the telecom giants officially had no comment. Until this program, phone companies required court orders before cooperating with a wiretap. USAT acknowledges that the NYT originally broke the news of the telecoms' cooperation in December but takes credit for digging up the company names. Absent warrants, the telecoms are granting access to their systems on the basis of "oral requests from senior government officials."

Letter Of The Day

I find it very interesting that a majority of voters in Palestine chose Hamas to lead them. Isn't this democracy at work? Yes, just not the way the Bush administration would want. Well, democracy doesn't guarantee that the best idea, or man, wins. Just that one side gets more votes than the other. Is democracy right for all people?

-J. E. Yungbluth, Rossie.

attribution

how many daves do you know?

http://davidjohns.blogspot.com/2005/06/my-camera-6-20-05.html

listen to the podcast.

and the process begins....

NEW YORK, Feb. 5 /PRNewswire/ -- As President Bush tours the country to promote the agenda he laid out in last week's State of the Union Address, key members of his campaign team are being poached by wanna-be candidates of 2008, reports Senior White House Correspondent Richard Wolffe in this week's Newsweek. "This is the first time in a long time where a lot of those people who have been out there for the president are free agents," says one important member of Bush's team. "This is the courtship period, and some are courting aggressively."

--source

aggressively? why does it take an aggressive offer for bushites? the way they defend the man, you'd think they'd put their money where their mouths are.

5000 tarists are in our midst

Intelligence officers who eavesdropped on thousands of Americans in overseas calls under authority from President Bush have dismissed nearly all of them as potential suspects after hearing nothing pertinent to a terrorist threat, according to accounts from current and former government officials and private-sector sources
with knowledge of the technologies in use.
...
Fewer than 10 U.S. citizens or residents a year, according to an authoritative account, have aroused enough suspicion during warrantless eavesdropping to justify interception of their domestic calls, as well. That step still requires a warrant from a federal judge, for which the government must supply evidence of probable cause.

The Bush administration refuses to say -- in public or in closed session of Congress -- how many Americans in the past four years have had their conversations recorded or their e-mails read by intelligence analysts without court authority. Two knowledgeable sources placed that number in the thousands; one of them, more specific, said about 5,000.

--WaPo
i think Americans are starting to notice that they've been conned once too many times, and they're not going to put up with it any more. the only ones who don't give a damn about democracy and our freedoms, are those who side with this nazi.

Paragraph of the Day

The WP fronts the administration's wiretapping program yielding few potential terrorism suspects. (Didn't the NYT lead with this story three weeks ago?) The Post's convoluted piece focuses on the technical aspects of the program, specifically the role automated filters play in selecting leads. Turns out these filters ain't so good at picking out possible terrorists from innocent bystanders.

--from today's papers

encronomics is alive an well at the whitehouse

But kudos to the Post for pointing out that Bush "continues a pattern of leaving substantial military expenditures out of the budget." Last week the Pentagon said it would ask for an additional $120 billion outside of the budget for its operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's over a quarter of the president's proposed defense spending.

imagine if 25% of your budget didn't have to be part of the budget. my how rich we'd all be. until the time came for those payments to be made.

Letter of the WeeQ

Did I miss something? How can you run a lead editorial on the latest lobbying/money/corruption scandal in Congress and then print no letters to the editor in response ("At Least Try To Reform Congressional Ethics," Jan. 23)? Am I to believe that my letter to the editor on this subject was the only one you received on the ethics mess in Congress?

If true, that's another story waiting to be told. As you are not bound by past editorial board opinions, perhaps the current editorial board could do a re-examination of the whole campaign-spending mess in Congress and at the state level. This should include a rejection of the Register's past view that money in politics cannot be regulated.

Examine what a number of other leading newspapers and commentators have been saying about the latest scandal in Congress. In short, the consensus is that until Congress does something about public campaign financing to remove the need to raise large amounts of campaign funds, any other so-called "reform" will do little to remove the link between private money and public policy.

If the Register does not accept the fundamentally corrupting nature of money in politics, then you should at least tell readers why and explain how "ethics reform" will accomplish anything new.

—Jon Euchner, Indianola.

attributioni

Letter Of The Day

I have a suggestion to offer Gov. Tom Vilsack's task force studying the issue of TouchPlay machines in Iowa. Create a 2,000-foot buffer zone between TouchPlay machines and any school or day-care center. This out-of-sight, out-of-mind law-making would effectively have the same impact on the gambling problem in Iowa as it has had in dealing with the sex-offender problem: none.

We can stuff all the sex offenders and TouchPlay machines together and just pretend that they are not there. I predict that our lawmakers will draft more feel-good legislation, like roping off the machines and using surveillance cameras, which all looks good, while never dealing with the real issue of gambling in Iowa.

—Mike Arndt, Norwalk.

attribution

watching MTP

and boehmer is as aloof as it gets. he has no concept of reality. none.

the republicans did us a favor by electing him. thanks boys.