more cartoon material: a young boy standing in front of his mother, whining about the neighbor kids saying nasty things about him. the mother calls the police and they come only to find out that the kid was lying (no neighbor kids around), so when they scold the young boy, he points to mommy and says to the cops: "well, SHE's the one who called you." actually, the neighborhood boys are in the distant background with t-shirts saying economy, terrorism, healthcare.

another letter writer from west des moines. you can usually tell the author is from west des moines even before ya get to the 2nd paragraph. bigot central has setup headquarters in their townsquare mall. but notice, this guy, if that is indeed what he likes to see himself as, forgets to mention that the COSTS of those services is what makes him stagger, not free-wheeling doling out of state's money.
DesMoinesRegister.com | Opinion: "Iowa continues to spend more and more on goods and services for fewer and fewer people, and that is'staggering.'
Robert F. Anderson,
West Des Moines. "

i wish i was a cartoonist. i'd draw a picture of the shrub in a deep deep hole, asking for a bigger shovel. while everybody around him is pointing fingers asking, did you take his shovel? then the big pile of dirt piled up behind them with the letters I R A Q. and then some nasty looking clouds overhead with lightning bolts with the names of dem presidential candidates. oh yah, they all gotta be standing in water. :)

so andrea mitchell is on imus right now, saying that wolfowitz' comments on meet the press yesterday should garner some heat. where wolfowitz tried to slip in the saddam-kobel towers & cole attacks. unbelievable that he said that, and my jaw did drop. especially when timmy came back with the question, are you saying that saddam is tied to those attacks? wolfie being the 'oh no, no' whine, then covering up with some crapola about how we wouldnt even be there for those attacks to have happened had it not been for saddam. i swear, it just gets more laughable every fuckn day. laughable at the stupidity of these white men in power. certainly not laughable at the mess they've made.

and lastly, we have this one, who thinks that paying state employees' salaries from private funds is unethical, to say the least i'm sure. do i agree? yes. vilsack, for all the good he's done, isn't perfect and made a whopper of a 'mistake' with this one. i'm sure he has his reasons, and they're probably as sound as a bu$h excuse. but hey, lets not get in the habit of this sort of thing. if donors want to pay state employees' salaries, let them pay the road workers and the social workers.
DesMoinesRegister.com | Opinion: "Private payouts
Regarding the plan to pay Iowa's director of economic development in part with private funds:
The use of private funds to supplement state employee wages is inappropriate, especially if the beneficiaries of the private largess will be making decisions about the distribution of state money that could go to the donors.
Mark L. Smith,
Des Moines "

the register is just full of it today. it != shit .. but a good example of how a whole lotta people seem to be feeling these day. here we have someone who would have a very hard time sweating out an answer as to just where did george bu$h "plant his seeds?"
DesMoinesRegister.com | Opinion: "Being rich: An OK goal
As the gap between the 'rich' and the 'poor' continues to increase, several thoughts come to mind.
I remember when those 'without' used to admire those 'with.' I remember when those 'without' aspired to be like those 'with.' I remember the media didn't make a big deal out of the difference.
As years go by, this gap between incomes and net worth will continue to widen due to the following fact:
Rich people continue to do what makes them rich, and poor people continue to do what makes them poor. Imagine that. That is why no matter what is done to try to make everyone the same, it will never happen.
A wise man once told me, 'Young man, if you never get around to planting any seeds, how do you ever expect to live off of the harvest?'
Kurt E. Brewer,
Des Moines."

the hangover must be wearing off.
DesMoinesRegister.com | Opinion: "Regarding a quote in the July 20 Register story, 'Swift Victory, Ill-Planned Peace':
'Pentagon officials said they are studying the lessons of Iraq closely - to ensure that the next U.S. takeover of a foreign country goes more smoothly.
' 'We are going to get better over time,' promised Lawrence DiRita, a special assistant to [Secretary of State Donald] Rumsfeld. 'We'll get better as we do it more often'.'
What outrageous statements. U.S. citizens gave President Bush a free pass with Iraq because it seemed terrorism could be encouraged by Saddam Hussein. But to talk of other takeovers is chilling.
What country and time are we in? I do not see any understanding or appreciation of other cultures by this administration. No wonder Bush's poll numbers continue to slide.
Bonnie Pitz,
Newton."

great letter today in the register.
DesMoinesRegister.com | Opinion: "Hook President Bush up to a lie detector and ask him if he hyped intelligence to justify the Iraq war. He will answer 'no' and the needle won't even quiver.
The deception Bush practices is self-deception. He hears what he wants to hear and believes what he wants to believe. Common enough, but potentially deadly in a president.
Ian Brinnie,
Des Moines."

corporate welfare? if we're going to do a cost-estimate ratio thing, then lets get busy. because the cost of not providing basic healthcare and foodstamps to the poor, is right up there when it comes to how much the state could save by offering the tidbit assistance it's being asked for, and in cases where poopyheads are writing the checks, denied.
DesMoinesRegister.com | Opinion: "Wells Fargo reportedly may ask state and local officials for $25 million to $30 million in aid. "

i didnt even have to get past the 1st line, much less to the end of the 1st paragraph to know this letter writer was from west des moines, poopyville of the midwest.
DesMoinesRegister.com | Opinion: "I'm afraid I can't conjure up any sympathy for these complaining U.S. soldiers. The poor babies have been away from Mama for almost six months now. But it is easy to see where the liberal media would pick it up and try to make a big deal out of it."

a few months ago, mason city iowa voters approved a 1% local option sales tax that was supposed to offset the budget cuts hitting our schools. today, news of the school board continuing to cut staff & services to the tune of $373,000. i'm just sick.

as they say in washington: how much do ya got?
Yahoo! News - Police Departments Turn to Private Money: "Police and foundation officials say they guard against the possibility of wealthy donors winning undue influence.
Without question, some donors are helping themselves. The handbag manufacturer Coach, Major League Baseball and the Motion Picture Association of America earmark their donations for the NYPD's trademark-infringement unit, contributing to a $200,000 account that is used to make undercover purchases of counterfeit CDs, clothes and other goods.
Supervising Sgt. Tom McFadden said the funding does not compromise his unit's independence. "

FBI AND US SPY AGENTS SAY BUSH SPIKED BIN LADEN PROBES BEFORE 11 SEPTEMBER: "But the FBI files were closed in 1996 apparently before any conclusions could be reached on either the Bin Laden brothers or the organisation itself. High-placed intelligence sources in Washington told the Guardian this week: 'There were always constraints on investigating the Saudis'.

They said the restrictions became worse after the Bush administration took over this year. The intelligence agencies had been told to 'back off' from investigations involving other members of the Bin Laden family, the Saudi royals, and possible Saudi links to the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Pakistan."

DesMoinesRegister.com | Opinion: "In his July 14 letter, Greg Heartsill indulges in some illogic by equating the donors to a given political party with those most helped by a party. He claims that more big-money donations are given to Democrats than to Republicans and then draws the conclusion that the 'Democrats are actually the party of the rich.'
That can only be true if one assumes that the Democratic Party pays back these rich donors with pro-wealthy policies. Heartsill makes no such claim.
Of course there are wealthy Democrats, just as there are Republicans of modest means. But the test of a party lies in its policies and values, not in its donors. The policies of the Democratic Party are more closely aligned with the economic interests of families of average means than are those of the Republicans.
Robert Bataille,
Ames."

i was never scared about the threat from iraq. but i AM scared of the north korean threat.

it's one thing that a governor (in this case, Iowa's Tom Vilsack) admitting that he can't read email, it's quite another when another leader (in this case, the current resident of the whitehouse) bounces it. from today's slate:

Finally, the NYT fronts George W.'s new email address, in case you want to weigh in on any of the above. The new address dumps you smack into an e-bureaucracy, however—you've got to wade through nine Web pages, pick your topic from a list and then state your intentions, i.e., friend or foe? After your message is sent, you have to confirm that you really meant to send it. Jimmy Orr, first identified in the article as a White House spokesman and then, two paragraphs later, as Internet news director, calls the new system an "enhancement," but he adds that the old address is still perfectly fine—except that your message may not be read or responded to.

my letter to the editor of the globe gazette

there's just too much to track, so to enlist some help here's a couple of links:

ITN

and

BARTCOP

DesMoinesRegister.com | Opinion: "Cozy ties between business and government get in the way of economic freedom, too. When governments intervene on behalf of various businesses, give welfare to corporations or adopt supposedly business-friendly policies, it skews the market. Business and government must maintain an arm's-length relationship for both business and democracy to function correctly, argues The Economist. When business lobbyists dominate government, public policy is inevitably twisted into the service of private greed."

DAMN i wish he'd run for president.
Janeane Garofalo Interview | Elizabeth DiNovella | May 2003 Issue: "Question: Why are you so active in social justice and peace issues?
Martin Sheen: I do it because I can't seem to live with myself if I do not. I don't know any other way to be. It isn't something you can explain; it is just something that you do; it is something that you are."

NBC’s instant expert. Appearing by phone from Baghdad on MSNBC’s Imus in the Morning on Thursday, NBC News reporter Tom Aspell complained about the lack of electricity and suggested U.S. officials aren’t being forthcoming about why there isn’t guaranteed electricity as he asserted that “we're being led to believe that the blame is entirely at the feet of saboteurs.” Noting how hot it is, Aspell suggested the solution is easy: “It's really quite unbearable and so easy to fix if they'd just rolled in and brought a lot of power lines and really did make a concentrated effort, I'm sure things would calm down a lot sooner."

So how much time has Aspell spent in Baghdad to gain such expertise on how the solution is so easy? Imus: "How long have you been there?" Aspell: "Two days.”

http://www.mediaresearch.org/cyberalerts/2003/cyb20030711.asp#2

give this girl a ceegar
DesMoinesRegister.com | Opinion: "We continually hear that drug companies need the money to continue their research into new medications, yet their advertising budgets far exceed their research budgets."
Carol Dupic,
Emmetsburg.

DesMoinesRegister.com | Opinion: "Supporting the troops means using every resource available to speed the completion of their mission so they can come home."

DesMoinesRegister.com | Opinion: "If the benefit for seniors is really as good as politicians want America to believe, why isn't it good enough for lawmakers?
Congressman Fortney Stark of California observed, 'This bill says, 'We take care of our own, and to hell with the average American.' "

TOMPAINE.com - From The New York Times Best-seller: See No Evil: "On my BBC television show, Newsnight, an American journalist confessed that, since the 9/11 attacks, U.S. reporters are simply too afraid to ask the uncomfortable questions that could kill careers: 'It's an obscene comparison, but there was a time in South Africa when people would put flaming tires around people's necks if they dissented. In some ways, the fear is that you will be neck-laced here, you will have a flaming tire of lack of patriotism put around your neck,' Dan Rather said. Without his makeup, Rather looked drawn, old and defeated in confessing that he too had given in. 'It's that fear that keeps journalists from asking the toughest of the tough questions and to continue to bore in on the tough questions so often.' "

BUSH LIED AND THOUSANDS DIED
Jihad Unspun - A Clear View On The US War On "Terrorism": "New information from remote locations of Iraq has pushed up the civilian death toll from the U.S.-led war by 500 in the last month to at least 6,000, an Anglo-American research group says. The Iraq Body Count's (IBC) latest figures, based on media reports and more than a dozen counting projects from independent investigators in and outside Iraq, put the minimum number of civilians dead at 6,055 and the maximum at 7,706"

the excuse du jour:
Yahoo! News - Rumsfeld: No New Iraq Weapons Evidence Before War: "WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Wednesday the United States did not go to war with Iraq (news - web sites) because of dramatic new evidence of banned weapons but because it saw existing information on Iraqi arms programs in a new light after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. "

well, DUH. what else should we have expected from liars, cheats and thieves.
2002 Federal Register Is Longest Ever (washingtonpost.com): "The Bush administration, philosophically wedded to the idea of smaller government, issued a record-high number of pages of new federal regulations last year, according to a study to be released today by the Cato Institute.
The libertarian think tank found that the Federal Register boasted 75,606 pages of federal regulations in 2002, up from a high of 74,528 pages in 2000, when President Bill Clinton was still in office. The surge is part of a decade-long rise in this crude index of federal regulatory activity, with the number of pages in the Federal Register increasing by 24 percent between 1993 and 2002."

dueling quotes comin up:
Yahoo! News - Dems Urge Probe of Iraqi Uranium Claim: "On June 8, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites), too, had said on NBC's 'Meet the Press' that Bush was wrong when he said the British government had learned that Iraq had sought uranium from Africa to build weapons.
'No one in our circles knew that there were doubts and suspicions that this might be a forgery,' she said. 'Of course, it was information that was mistaken.' "

the voice of the grunt, david hackworth writes:

that's tellin 'em clark. :)
DesMoinesRegister.com | Opinion: "Bruce Fleming's June 27 letter, 'More Gun Owners Equals Less Gun Violence,' makes the statement that 'Guns are used 2.5 million times per year to defend life and home from criminals.'
The figure appears statistically impossible. If accurate, it would mean approximately one in 100 Americans - man, woman and child - would have used a firearm in the last year to defend their lives or property.
Yet a majority of Americans don't own a gun, much less use it annually to blast away at attackers. Translated to my town of 5,000, it would imply there were 50 such incidents of defensive shooting in the last year. I would have heard about such a wave of violence.
The only way the numbers work is if recreational hunting is included in the mix. Perhaps the source of the data has counted ducks, deer and other game in his definition of 'criminals.'
This sounds improbable, but it makes the statistic believable and is on a similar intellectual level to other arguments by the National Rifle Association and its supporters.
Clark Sheets,
Sheldon. "

t r u t h o u t - William Rivers Pitt | The Insiders Are Coming Out: "'As we know, there are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know we don't know.'"

carolyn kay over at makethemaccountable points out all the good news lately. well, DUH. evil greed has that way of overbiting and choking on it.

republicons will say: yes sir, yes sir.
democrats will say: say WHAT?

To cut to the chase, we have just revealed a hole in the U.S. Electoral system through which you could drive a mack truck. The details follow below and are at the following two links… with pictures….

Inside A U.S. Election Vote Counting Program

Story with, for the first time, a link to the full 40,000 files from the
Diebold ftp site

BRAAAH VO

New Page 1: "Fox gives misinformation.
Conservatives watch Fox.
Therefore, conservatives who follow the news closely are misinformed."

Go-Along First Lady Shows She Can Go It Alone: "But in a White House where senior staff members are commended for keeping their heads down and letting the president be the star"

Go-Along First Lady Shows She Can Go It Alone: "Laura Bush collected nearly $2 million last month at three fund-raisers for President Bush's re-election campaign, Bush-Cheney '04, and campaign officials expect her to appear at some 20 more."

i cant believe disney did it. they actually did it.
New York Post Online Edition: entertainment: "July 3, 2003 -- MICHAEL Savage has been permanently dropped from up following the collapse of West Coast contract talks that used the Bronx-raised blabber's beloved New York affiliation as leverage.
WABC (770 AM) abruptly yanked Savage off the air earlier this month in solidarity with its San Francisco sister station, KSFO, during noisy negotiations with Savage, who's based at KSFO but is syndicated by another company. "

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!... and in the words of one of the great men in the 20th century:

Liberalism is not socialism, and never will be... Liberalism has its own history and its own tradition. Socialism has its own formulas and aims. Socialism seeks to pull down wealth; Liberalism would preserve private interests in the only way in which they can be safely and justly preserved, namely, by reconciling them with public right. Socialism would kill enterprise; Liberalism would rescue enterprise from the trammels of privilege and preference. Socialism assails the pre-eminence of the individual; Liberalism seeks, and shall seek more in the future, to build up a minimum standard for the mass. Socialism exalts the rule; Liberalism exalts the man. Socialism attacks capital; Liberalism attacks monopoly."

-- Winston Churchill

disturbing is an understatement.
Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Isabel Hilton: Blunkett has stripped us of protection: "So what if he's not guilty. He just has to look the part"

i know, i know. its amazing that there are people that can possibly be so ignorant, but sure enough, there's one right in my own backyard.
globegazette.com - North Iowa Opinion Stories: "I assume Chris would rather go back to the Clinton era of honor and credibility. The '90s truly made the U.S.A. the laughing stock of the free world internationally, and President Bush is bringing back honor and credibility "

they had to put THAT one up?? bastards. rediculously transparent.
Yahoo! News Photos - Vermont Gov. Howard Dean: "Howard Dean, D-Vermont, candidate for the United States President(AFP/File"

Katherine Hepburn, the last grande Dame of Hollywood, died over the weekend. in her honor, one quote that typifies her simpleness: "I don't believe in marriage. It's bloody impractical to love, honor and obey. If it weren't, you wouldn't have to sign a contract."

DesMoinesRegister.com | Opinion: "It's hard to argue for preservation of AmeriCorps in the face of $400 billion budget deficits, but its selection for the ax might say something about the nation's values. "

: "But what neither plan deals with is the escalating costs of prescription drugs and the questionable practices by drug manufacturers aimed at keeping those costs - and their resulting profits - high. Legal reforms talked about so much during the last congressional campaigns, which would have reduced costs by forcing drug companies to spend less on advertising and by making the criteria for releasing generic, less costly versions of the same drugs to the public less stringent, have been forgotten in all this new rhetoric. "

well, DUH
Opinion: Joel McNally: Family values for all (captimes.com): "There's an incredibly simple solution for people who are opposed to same-sex marriage. All they have to do is refrain from marrying anyone of the same sex. "

Yahoo! News - FCC Official: Fast Web Content Rules Not Needed Now: "'A competitive market will ensure that all content providers ... will be able to reach any Internet-connected customer without interference from software, hardware or access providers, regardless of affiliation,' Tom Tauke, Verizon's vice president for public policy, told the conference. "

yaya sisterhood
Court overturns Texas sodomy law

a uniter not a divider i think he said during the campaign. didn't he? couldn't tell from kurtz this morning.
The Great Divide (washingtonpost.com) Two wars later, we're back to the old red state/blue state divide in America.
It's hardly unusual, as the presidential cycle heats up, for the Dems who want Bush's job to be painting him as a failure. But rarely is there such a perception gap, with the Dems portraying the prez as devious and semi-incompetent, while GOPers see a strong, moral leader who has stood up to terrorists. The war in Iraq, in this regard, is either a brilliant triumph over a brutal dictator or an unnecessary conflict sold on a Big Lie.
Take a CBS/New York Times poll from last month? Does Bush have strong qualities of leadership? 92 percent of Republicans, 66 percent of independents and 50 percent of Democrats say yes.
Cares a lot about the problems of people like yourself? 63 percent of Republicans say yes, compared to 25 percent of independents and 9 percent of Democrats.
Do his policies favor the rich? Only 25 percent of GOPers agree, compared to 56 percent of independents and 82 percent of Democrats.
That, friends, is a pretty polarized country.

province seems to be poppin, and poopin, all over the place when referring to iraq.
Inexperienced Hands Guide Iraq Rebuilding (washingtonpost.com) "Before the war, nobody stopped and said, 'Aren't we going to need a bunch of people in the provinces?' "