you expect bush to take blame for not getting things done???

mwahaha

"I call on the Senate minority leader to end his blocking tactics and allow the Senate to do its work and pass a fair, effective immigration reform bill," Bush said in his weekly radio address.

Reid shot back that Bush and Frist "are flat-out wrong about what happened to the immigration bill," saying Democrats proved their commitment to a comprehensive, bipartisan measure by voting twice in favor of it.

"It was President Bush and Republicans in Congress who lacked the backbone to stand up to the extreme right wing of their party, filibustered reform twice in two days, and put partisan politics ahead of border security and immigration reform," Reid said.

--source

always blaming the democrats. when it's the republicans who rule with control of every aspect of government, how DARE they blame the party out of power for not getting something done. how DARE they.

from the WELL DUH files

New statistics suggest San Francisco has the highest percentage of gay men among major cities in the world, with a quarter of them HIV-positive, a top city health official said on Friday.

...

He said it found an estimated 63,577 gay males aged 15 and above in San Francisco, a city with a total population of 764,000. That figure represents nearly one in five of the city's males above the age of 15.

0ne out of every four gay males -- 25.8 percent -- is infected with the HIV virus, giving San Francisco an estimated total of 16,401 HIV-positive men, said McFarland, an epidemiologist who has also worked on studies in Uganda, Zimbabwe and Egypt....

--story

san francisco, the most beautiful city in the world. no wonder it's so gay.

DHS: department of perverts and felons?

Leander Pickett, a teacher's assistant at Englewood Elementary, said he was manhandled and handcuffed by two plain clothed Homeland Security officers in front of the school Tuesday for no reason at all.

"I would like to treat people the way I would want to be treated, and yesterday I wasn't treated that way," Pickett said.
Pickett has been working at Englewood for two years, and his principal and colleagues told Channel 4 they have never met a harder worker or nicer guy.

"He's well loved by everyone because he's willing to do anything to help children," said the Englewood Elementary Principal Gail Brinson.

However, Tuesday afternoon Pickett's niceness turned to anger, disappointment, and betrayal when, as Pickett was directing bus traffic, he said he was handcuffed and roughed up and humiliated by the very people that were supposed to protect him.

"I walked up to him and said, 'Sir, you need to move.' That's when he said 'I'm a police officer. I'm with Homeland Security ... I'll move it when I want to.' That's when he started grabbing me on my arm," Pickett said.

However, Homeland Security tells a different story.

The department said the only reason the officers were at the school was because they pulled over to look at a map.

The department also said it's looking into what happened, and that Pickett's version is wrong. It claims he was antagonizing the officers.

Several people were outside of the school, watching the incident take place, and those witnesses agree with Pickett's story.

"Mr. Pickett asked the guy blocking the bus loading zone to move, and the guy told him he would move his car when he got ready to move it," said Englewood coach Alton Jackson.

"At that point I intervened and I went up to the gentleman and said, 'Mr. Pickett is an employee here,' and they said that didn't matter," said Englewood media specialist, Terri Dreisonstok.

"'We're with Homeland Security,' and on and on they went, and pretty soon, before you know it, he's handcuffed and slammed against a car," Brinson said. "All the children are watching, they're all upset."

--story

2nd Homeland Security official in teen sex scandal - exposed himself to teenage girl in mall, formerly ran sex predator operation at Homeland Security

--story

And the federal agent can’t seem to stop talking to the cops.

Michael Burks: My father was a police officer. I was a police officer. I work for the Department of Homeland security. I understand you guys have a job to do and I’m not trying to tell anything else other than that. I swear to God, as God as my witness, I’m wearing a St. Michael’s medal right now, okay? I was not going to do anything with her.

--story

WHAT THE FUCK

i'm not getting posts done here

huh? what the hell is going on here?

does he REALLY want world war III?

The administration of President George W. Bush is planning a massive bombing campaign against Iran, including use of bunker-buster nuclear bombs to destroy a key Iranian suspected nuclear weapons facility, The New Yorker magazine has reported in its April 17 issue.

--yahoo

Letter Of The Day

Must Raise Voice Against Limitless Presidency,” caught my eye. Though I agree with your point, I do not agree with your wording.

Words like “limitless,” “buzz off” and “cockamamie theory” show a prejudice against President Bush. There is no mention of President Jimmy Carter’s case of United States v. Truong, where Carter’s Justice Department claimed Carter had a “constitutional prerogative” to conduct this warrantless wiretap. So it was OK for Carter in peace time but wrong for Bush now? In my opinion it was wrong both times.

— Jim Davidson, Cedar Rapids.

attribution

the numbers

Just 36 percent of the public approves of Bush's job performance, his lowest-ever rating in AP-Ipsos polling. By contrast, the president's job approval rating was 47 percent among likely voters just before Election Day 2004 and a whopping 64 percent among registered voters in October 2002.

Only 40 percent of the public approves of Bush's performance on foreign policy and the war on terror, another low-water mark for his presidency. That's down 9 points from a year ago. Just before the 2002 election, 64 percent of registered voters backed Bush on terror and foreign policy.

Just 35 percent of the public approves of Bush's handling of Iraq, his lowest in AP-Ipsos polling.

--source

not denying is the same as confirming, ain't it?

The White House on Friday chose not to challenge a prosecutor's disclosure that President George W. Bush authorized top official Lewis "Scooter" Libby to disclose intelligence on Iraq in 2003, as Libby alleges.

--source

brokeback mountain

i can see why this film won 3 academy awards. including best director. God what a fantastic movie. i'm still reeeling from the effects of it the day after. i can't get it out of my mind and my heart aches at remembering some of my past affairs this film reminded me of.

if you haven't seen it, GO SEE IT. you will not be disappointed.

hoiw many times have you heard

"we do not negotiate with terrorists"? well, this just proves terrorists aren't behind the insurgency in iraq:

The US ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, has said US officials have held talks with some groups linked to the Sunni-led Iraqi insurgency.

--story

the next time you get called a judas for betraying someone

point to the latest episode in the life of Christ:

Everybody fronts the surfacing of the only known copy of what's called the Gospel of Judas; the 1,700-year-old text asserts that Jesus told Judas to sell him out. "You can see how early Christians could say, if Jesus's death was all part of God's plan, then Judas's betrayal was part of God's plan," said one academic. "So what does that make Judas? Is he the betrayer, or the facilitator of salvation, the guy who makes the crucifixion possible?"

they're calling it republican fatigue

i'm calling it fed up with the culture of corruption.

Columbus- Weary from a string of scandals and bad economic news, a majority of likely voters want Democrats to retake control of Ohio government, according to a new poll released Wednesday.

Republican fatigue is particularly evident among the Democrats surveyed. But 62 percent of the important swing voters said they'd like to end the GOP dominance that began 15 years ago, according to a telephone poll of likely primary voters conducted by the University of Akron's Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics.

--story

it's been no secret to us voxxers

that information has gone thru the NSA (up yours you filthy commie nazi). mediacom, which is my provider, pumps all my traffic through ATT's routers. but now there's more evidence supporting our claims.

"The evidence that we are filing supports our claim that AT&T is diverting Internet traffic into the hands of the NSA wholesale, in violation of federal wiretapping laws and the Fourth Amendment," said EFF Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston. "More than just threatening individuals' privacy, AT&T's apparent choice to give the government secret, direct access to millions of ordinary Americans' Internet communications is a threat to the Constitution itself. We are asking the Court to put a stop to it now."

--source

keeping the polulace in the dark

is what dark leaders (and dictators) do.

Scientists doing climate research for the federal government say the Bush administration has made it hard for them to speak forthrightly to the public about global warming. The result, the researchers say, is a danger that Americans are not getting the full story on how the climate is changing.

--source

to all the creationists out there

eat this: (from today's papers)

The New York Times leads with and others front scientists discovering a 375-million-year-old all-terrain creature that appears to be a missing link between fish and land-based animals. The Tiktaalik roseae—Inuktitut for "large shallow water fish"—had arm-joints, proto-wrists, and could drag itself across land. It's exactly the kind of transitional creature that creationists have long crowed there had never been evidence of.

Letter Of The Day

comes to us from the young reader board at des moines register:

The problem with Democrats today is they seem to aspire only to be Republican-lite. Corporate interests, the costs of campaigns and the focus on "base issue" polling have given us a landscape of demo-clones who all say mostly the same thing with slightly differing degrees of believability.

Why would Democratic voters feel energized when they feel as if they are voting for what seems like progressive or moderate Republicans rather than real Democrats? We need the Democratic Party to shake down its entrenched leadership and organize its message.

Scream about the environment and the tax cuts, propose radical shifts from fossil fuels to renewable energies and force a real debate on health care rather than the same tired platitudes every time elections roll around.

I'll vote for the first person who stands up and shakes his or her finger at us in believable anger for allowing our current president to wiretap illegally, strand us in Iraq under false pretenses and destroy our budget surplus with staggering debt.
— Chris Gorder, Iowa Falls

attribution

iranian democrats to bush: you cant buy our democracy

"We have to prepare the ground for it so that it can grow and bear fruit - especially because independent and national forces, and also self-reliant forces, in Iran will never accept a foreign country telling them what to do and which way to take."
--Mohammad Ali Dadkhah, co-founder of the Center for Human Rights Defenders

attribution

wanna hear what family values really means to republicans?

PHOENIX (AP) - Two young men charged with sodomizing 18 boys at a youth camp last year have been offered a plea agreement that may net them little jail time and no record of sexual assault.

Clifton Bennett, 18, the son of Arizona Senate President Ken Bennett (R-Prescott), and his co-defendant, Kyle Wheeler, 19, were charged in January with 18 counts of aggravated assault and 18 counts of kidnapping for the incidents, which happened at a youth camp last June.

--story

and since their punishment is likely to be a slap on the hand, makes it all the more tragic.

wonder why this has changed just in the last 2 years

A new online poll conducted by Scholastic magazine says more than 80% of kids don't want to be the leader of the most powerful nation on Earth.

Amazingly, that's a nearly total flip from 2004, when 75% of the elementary and middle school children did want to rule the roost from the White House.
--source

another repuke idea that'll backfire

A piece inside the Post wonders whether giving Zacarias Moussaoui the death penalty would be bad for national security. "There's absolutely no doubt that executing him would turn him into a martyr," said one analyst. "Moussaoui could achieve a fame and notoriety in death that eluded him in life."

FARPOINT.FACTOID

and while i'm at it: a few facts:

The Wall Street Journal, meanwhile, notes new Treasury numbers concluding that the richest 1 percent of Americans "held 33.4 percent of the nation's net worth in 2004, up from 32.7 percent in 2001, but still lower than a peak of 34.6 percent in 1995."

--source

BUSTED!

the GOPher boy line that the tax cuts mainly help the rich? HAHA, the joke's on you buster for believing it.

But of course super-wealthy Americans get super-savings from the investment tax cut: They're the ones who invest the most. The piece also offers hard numbers again and again—for example, those who make more than $10 million in a year saw an average tax savings of $500,000. What the story rarely does is give readers a more balanced picture, namely what proportion of income the super-rich are paying in taxes and how that compares with the not-so-rich. In fairness, the story does achieve one of its goals: deflating the rhetoric from the GOP that the dividend tax cut helps most average Joes; it doesn't.
--source

Quote of the Day

"The commitment to what the president of the United States will say every single day of the week is his number one priority in Iraq, when it's translated into action, looks very tiny."
--Les Campbell, who runs programs in the Middle East for the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, known as NDI.

attribution

first the oil companies, and now the insurance industry

making record profits. how obscene.

Letter of the WeeQ

It was no surprise that George W. Bush has stated that our troops will remain in Iraq through 2008. After all, Bush has spent his life having people in power (his family, wealthy friends, the Supreme Court) give him an enterprise (an oil company, a baseball team, the United States) that he promptly proceeds to run into the ground.

Then he moves on, leaving a mess for someone else to clean up. The quagmire in Iraq, ballooning national debt, etc. have become problems for future presidents and our descendants.

True to form, Bush happily goes about his usual pattern - sowing chaos while others reap the results. But, how could anyone expect anything else from him? It's all he knows.
— Michael Santangelo, Iowa City.

attribution

Letter Of The Day

Terry Mattingly’s column in Saturday’s Globe-Gazette about writer Eric Metaxas’ humorous takes on God and the Bible brings to mind an edition of Wiley Miller’s comic strip, “Non Sequitur,” that features as its main caption, “God Does the Talk Show Circuit.”

The strip shows God, in the stereotypical depiction of an old man with a beard, talking to Jay Leno. God says, “I think my best creation was the sense of humor. The irony, of course, is that the people who claim to believe in me the most are the ones least likely to have one.”
--KEVIN YOUNG, Sheffield

attribution

watching cbs' "the unit"

and one has to wonder.... how close to reality it imitates. i'll bet thiiiiiis close.

those who have no confidence in American justice

to work when all else fails, has not my confidence to lead.

an army of criminals - the rumsfeld way

A young Iraqi girl has given a shocking first hand account of what witnesses claim amounts to mass murder by US troops in the war-torn country...

Fifteen people in all were killed, including her parents and grandparents. Her account has been corroborated by other eyewitnesses who say it was a revenge attack after a roadside bomb killed a marine...
--source

winning hearts and minds has got to be harder with these kinds of maniacs in our armed forces.

HYPOCRISY ALERT

In a sleazy hotel room, "Brittany," then aged 16 and drugged into oblivion, waited for the men to arrive. Her pimps sent as many as 17 clients an evening through the door.

A "john" could even pre-book the pretty young blonde for $1,000 a night, sometimes flying in and then flying out from a nearby airport.

None of this happened in Bangkok or Costa Rica, places that have become synonymous with sex tourism and underage sex.

It took place in Atlanta, the buckle of the U.S. Bible Belt, where the world's busiest passenger airport provides a cheaper, more convenient and safer underage sex destination for men seeking girls as young as 10.

--SOURCE

arrest warrant out for rep. mckinney

U.S. Capitol Police on Monday asked a federal prosecutor to approve an arrest warrant for Rep. Cynthia McKinney after she tangled with a uniformed officer last week.
--source

our VP can shoot a man in the face and joke about it, but this woman defended herself and gets arrested. one has said it's apples and oranges .... why?

1. She is a woman.
2. She is black.
3. She is a LIBERAL Democrat who sees through the lies of the neocons.

Different standards must apply if we are to maintain NATIONAL SECURITY. Which in this case means making a scapegoat of this popular Dem to distract from the real stories that are spilling out of the Bushocracy even as we speak. Implying that McKinney is a lunatic criminal will help deflect the true stories about the real lunatic criminals. You know - the ones with the guns.

DELAY WATCH

Everybody leads with Rep. Tom DeLay announcing—via interviews in Time and a
local paper published late last night—that he's not going to run for reelection and will quit Congress, he offered, "probably by the end of May. " DeLay is set to make a formal announcement today.

Last week a second DeLay aide pleaded guilty to conspiracy and corruption charges and has sung to the feds about, as the Washington Post puts it, "a criminal enterprise being run out of DeLay's leadership offices." Not that that had anything to do with the congressman's decision, of course. DeLay explained that he was stepping down only because he was in a tough reelection campaign and was just taking one for the team. "This is a very strong Republican district," he said. "It's obvious to me that anybody but me running here will overwhelmingly win the seat."

Detailing how the feds are creeping ever closer to DeLay, a piece inside the Post points out that not only have two once top aides pleaded guilty, but DeLay's former chief of staff was also named in the latest government docs as a collaborator. In another plus for DeLay pulling out now, he can take all the cash from his campaign war-chest and drop it into his defense fund, which as the Post notes has so far been "financed largely by corporations with business before Congress."

Asked if he'd done anything illegal in office, DeLay told Time, "No." Anything immoral? "We're all sinners," said the Hammer.

THANKS TO TODAY'S PAPERS

and for all things delay head on over to the TPM Cafe Muckraker.

Letter Of The Day

Because a Muslim converted to Christianity he faced the death penalty in Afghanistan, and most Muslims there seem to support it. So, why did we get rid of the Taliban? Is this the democracy you envisioned, Mr. President?
— Philip Luksetich, Knoxville.

attribution

blogger atom just got back online

*whew* thought i was goin to DIE :)

the order of the last few things is probably backward. oh well. sue me

Letter Of The Day

Regarding Rekha Basu’s March 22 column: Another scenario that will arise from South Dakota’s anti-abortion law will be the forcing of rape victims to give birth to their rapists’ offspring.

By not allowing abortion even in the case of rape or incest, girls raped by their fathers would be forced to give birth to their own father’s children. I can’t comprehend how people who deem themselves “pro-life” and “pro-family” could force something this cruel onto a young girl.
— Randy Steele, Washington.

attribution

Headline Of The Day

Courted as Spies, Held as Combatants
British Residents Enlisted by MI5 After Sept. 11 Languish at Guantanamo

--story

i have another idea on why

nobody wants to work for the thievin lying sons of bitches.

The Bush administration can't seem to find anyone who is willing to take the job of FEMA director, reports the NYT on Page One. All the top emergency response experts around the country who have been asked have rejected the job, largely because they don't believe the administration is serious about fixing the agency. This problem goes beyond the job of director, as people who were appointed on an "acting basis" are filling 11 of the 30 top jobs at FEMA.

they LIED about iraq making us safer

Knight Ridder talked to some U.S. intelligence officials who say that insurgents in Iraq are providing training to Taliban and al-Qaida members from Afghanistan and Pakistan. Some of these militants went to Iraq to fight but after training they were urged to go back to their countries and use what they had been taught.

bush is BUSTED!

Knight Ridder talked to some U.S. intelligence officials who say that insurgents in Iraq are providing
No comments:

bush is BUSTED!

Knight Ridder talked to some U.S. intelligence officials who say that insurgents in Iraq are providing
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/14235672.htm training to Taliban and al-Qaida members from Afghanistan and Pakistan. Some of these militants went to Iraq to fight but after training they were urged to go back to their countries and use what they had been taught.

so iraq IS creating more terrorists!

FARPOINT.FACTOID

After the bombing of the shrine in February, 30,000 to 36,000 Iraqis have left their homes.
--source