how does one explain congress' 37% approval rating? here's an example that perty much says it all, imho:

Soaring deficits? All due to corrupt one party control.

Senate filibusters of judicial nominees? All due to corrupt one party control.

Growth of the republican nanny state? All due to corrupt one party control.

Healthcare unaffordable or unavailable? All due to corrupt one party control.

The republican War on Social Security? All due to corrupt one party control.

The lies leading up to the invasion of Iraq? All due to corrupt one party control.

The lies leading up to Bush's next war? All due to corrupt one party control.

Slowest job growth since Hoover was president? All due to corrupt one party control.

Tax code too complicated? All due to corrupt one party control.

Reproductive rights threatened or ignored? All due to corrupt one party control.

Environmental protections being weakened or ignored? All due to corrupt one party control.

Veterans' benefits being cut? All due to corrupt one party control.

Homeland security a farce? All due to corrupt one party control.

Disappearing etical standards in Congress? All due to corrupt one party control.

--snippy

some interesting numbers out today, on yahoo:

Only 37% of Americans gave Congress a high approval rating, down from 45% last month, the poll taken last week showed. A total of 53% disapproved, up from 48% in February. (Related link:Poll results)

It was the worst showing for Congress since September 1999, the year after the Republican-controlled House of Representatives impeached Clinton.

Even then, Congress had an identical 37% approval rating. It hasn't been lower since October 1997.

Meanwhile, President Bush (news - web sites)'s approval rating remained fairly steady at 52%. The number of those who disapproved of Bush's handling of his job was at 44%.

kerry called the bush administration the biggest bunch of liars and crooks ever to sit in the whitehouse. i wonder what he would say about this, from the LAT:

The U.S. contractor working on the project repeatedly warned the task force headed by Army Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus that a Lebanese middleman involved in the deal might be routing kickbacks to Iraqi Defense Ministry officials. But senior U.S. military officials did not act on the contractor's pleas for tighter financial controls, according to documents and interviews.

"If we proceed down the road we are currently on, there will be serious legal issues that will land us all in jail," the contractor, Dale Stoffel, wrote in a Nov. 30 e-mail to a senior assistant to Petraeus.

Eight days later, Stoffel was shot dead in an ambush near Baghdad. The killing is being investigated by the FBI, according to people who have been interviewed by the bureau.

Since then, senior U.S. military officials have continued to work with the middleman, Raymond Zayna, who has taken over part of Stoffel's contract, documents and interviews show.

kerry called the bush administration the biggest bunch of liars and crooks ever to sit in the whitehouse. i wonder what he would say about this, from the LAT:

The U.S. contractor working on the project repeatedly warned the task force headed by Army Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus that a Lebanese middleman involved in the deal might be routing kickbacks to Iraqi Defense Ministry officials. But senior U.S. military officials did not act on the contractor's pleas for tighter financial controls, according to documents and interviews.

"If we proceed down the road we are currently on, there will be serious legal issues that will land us all in jail," the contractor, Dale Stoffel, wrote in a Nov. 30 e-mail to a senior assistant to Petraeus.

Eight days later, Stoffel was shot dead in an ambush near Baghdad. The killing is being investigated by the FBI, according to people who have been interviewed by the bureau.

Since then, senior U.S. military officials have continued to work with the middleman, Raymond Zayna, who has taken over part of Stoffel's contract, documents and interviews show.

one can only hope ...

"The situation is negatively fluid," said one consultant. "If death comes from a thousand cuts, Tom DeLay is into a couple hundred."

rummy's famous line "you don't go to war with the army you want, you go to war with the army you got' can only mean one thing: that's correct when WE HAVE TO DEFEND OURSELVES.

how can you expect to achieve what you want, if you don't care that you got what it takes to get it?

when all three networks (fox doesn't count cuz they don't do network news) are on the same message, something is horribly wrong with independent media. it's amazing how the same clips get played by all three networks, how the same words are used, and the amazing part (to you non-believers) is that they're only synched when it comes to how they report on bush.

if rove doesn't have abc, cbs, and nbc in his pocket, not to mention cnn, msnbc, cnbc, and of course, fauxnews, in his pocket, i'll eat my hat.

doing the happy dance, i give you VICTORY. well, one down and 2 to go. from KRON (nbc4 in san francisco):

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- A judge ruled Monday that California can no longer justify limiting marriage to a man and a woman, a legal milestone that if upheld on appeal would pave the way for the nation's most populous state to follow Massachusetts in allowing same-sex couples to wed.

In an opinion that had been awaited because of San Francisco's historical role as a gay rights battleground, San Francisco County Superior Court Judge Richard Kramer said that withholding marriage licenses from gays and lesbians is unconstitutional.

"It appears that no rational purpose exists for limiting marriage in this state to opposite-sex partners," Kramer wrote.

The judge wrote that the state's historical definition of marriage, by itself, cannot justify the unconstitutional denial of equal protection for gays and lesbians and their right to marry.

"The state's protracted denial of equal protection cannot be justified simply because such constitutional violation has become traditional," Kramer wrote.

from the SICKO file (courtesy of the LA Times), and it just had to be involving the U.S. military this time.

BAQUBAH, Iraq — When Pfc. Chase McCollough went home on leave in November, he brought a movie made by fellow soldiers in Iraq. On his first night back at his parents' house in Texas, he showed the video to his fiancee, family and friends.

This is what they saw: a handful of American soldiers filmed through the green haze of night-vision goggles. Radio communication between two soldiers crackles in the background before it's drowned out by a heavy-metal soundtrack.

"Don't need your forgiveness," the song by the band Dope begins as images unfurl: armed soldiers posing in front of Bradley fighting vehicles, two women covered in black abayas walking along a dusty road, a blue-domed mosque, a poster of radical cleric Muqtada Sadr. Then, to the fast, hard beat of the music — "Die, don't need your resistance. Die, don't need your prayers" — charred, decapitated and bloody corpses fill the screen.

"It's like a trophy, something to keep," McCullough, 20, said back at his cramped living quarters at Camp Warhorse near Baqubah. "I was there. I did this."

why has nobody asked the question to bush: WHY ARE WE STILL IN IRAQ?

one can only wonder the response he'd give.

this one paragraph, buried inside a story about something else, tells me a lot more than any article could provide. this is the way the bushites work. get too comfy with 'the people' and your job is in jeopardy. from a Seattle paper :

In January, Republican leaders removed Rep. Christopher Smith, R-N.J., as committee chairman for being too close to veterans groups, too supportive of expanding benefits and too dismissive of Bush administration plans to slow VA spending and impose fees on low-priority veterans.

will the brits save us again?

doesn't look like it. from knight-ridder:

WASHINGTON - The man in charge of recommending changes to Great Britain's retirement system offers Americans a warning: Beware of changes to Social Security such as those President Bush is urging.

Nearly 20 years ago, Britain adopted a form of personal investment accounts much like the one Bush proposes. Britain also changed the way it calculates retirement benefits to adjust for inflation, keying them to consumer prices rather than wages, as Bush and others are considering for Social Security.

The result: "We have created the most complicated pension system in the world," said Adair Turner, a Merrill Lynch vice president and the chairman of the United Kingdom Pension Commission.

Moreover, Turner said, contrary to the benefits promised when the British changed their system, their new approach isn't increasing national savings, isn't fostering an "ownership society" and workers are retiring poorer than they did before.

will the brits save us again?

doesn't look like it. from knight-ridder:

WASHINGTON - The man in charge of recommending changes to Great Britain's retirement system offers Americans a warning: Beware of changes to Social Security such as those President Bush is urging.

Nearly 20 years ago, Britain adopted a form of personal investment accounts much like the one Bush proposes. Britain also changed the way it calculates retirement benefits to adjust for inflation, keying them to consumer prices rather than wages, as Bush and others are considering for Social Security.

The result: "We have created the most complicated pension system in the world," said Adair Turner, a Merrill Lynch vice president and the chairman of the United Kingdom Pension Commission.

Moreover, Turner said, contrary to the benefits promised when the British changed their system, their new approach isn't increasing national savings, isn't fostering an "ownership society" and workers are retiring poorer than they did before.

a good article in the times about MSM and the subject of covert propaganda, otherwise known to some of the bushites as video news releases.

again, we are caught up in deciding who is lying. and if experience has taught us anything it is to expect nothing close to the truth from our government.

this story is wreaking of inconsistencies. why would a car, carrying a secret agent who had just assisted in freeing a hostage, not heed 'warnings' at a 'checkpoint' by 'friendly' soldiers, who obviously weren't THAT friendly since the italians didn't see fit to keep the Americans in the loop. or so they say now. remember, the story is changing every day. they're phishing until they hit on one that finally sinks in and gets accepted by the populace. and we all know how fast that can be. from the turks:

ROME - US authorities in Iraq were kept in the dark about an Italian operation to free a kidnapped journalist which ended in debacle with an intelligence officer killed by GIs, an Italian general was quoted Saturday as saying.

Italian agent Nicola Calipari died in gunfire near a US checkpoint and journalist Giuliana Sgrena was wounded as their car drove to Baghdad airport on March 4, just after her release.

Mario Marioli, a deputy commander of the US-led coalition troops in Iraq, was quoted by the Italian newspaper La Repubblica as saying: "I asked Calipari if I should inform our American allies of the hostage-freeing operation, but his reply was that under no circumstances was the ally to be informed."

US authorities say the vehicle had failed to respond to signals to stop.

The incident has fanned anti-US sentiment in Italy where a large majority of the public was opposed to the US-led invasion of Iraq two years ago.

La Repubblica quoted statements by Marioli to Italian investigating magistrates probing the incident. He said he had twice been warned by Calipari not to disclose the operation to the Americans.

On the second occasion, with the hostage already free but the operation not yet complete, the general had asked whether he should warn the Americans that the Italians were driving to the airport with Sgrena.

"I was told no, although I warned that this might mean a quarter of an hour's wait at the checkpoint at the airport entrance," Marioli was quoted as saying.

The Italian government accepts the killing was an accident, but Italian and US versions differ.

Washington maintains Sgrena's car was speeding and failed to slow down or stop after soldiers flashed lights and fired warning shots.

Italian ministers say it was not speeding and there were no warning indications. Sgrena has suggested the US troops may have deliberately opened fire.

There had previously been suggestions that US forces may have been only partially informed about Calipari's mission, indicating troops on the ground may not have known who was in the car on a stretch of road notorious for insurgent attacks.

On Friday La Repubbica quoted statements by Marioli to magistrates that he had provided documents for the agent and an aide, but did not know details of their operation.

"The US chain of command had only bits of information...." the daily quoted the report as saying.

Meanwhile Italian Justice Minister Roberto Castelli on Friday accused Sgrena of causing problems.

"She expresses herself imprudently and she has acted imprudently," he said on Italy's Sky TG24 television news channel.

"She has caused enormous problems to the government and also mourning that could have been avoided," said the minister, a member of the right-wing Northern League, a junior coalition partner in Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government.

He was responding to Sgrena's remarks that she had no confidence in the joint Italian-Americam enquiry.

Speaking on television she said: "I feel accused over having been kidnapped and for having been released....I feel like a victim of cannibalism."

cant stomach the consequences of the message? that's easy, kill the messenger.
and now bush's excuse will be "well, the italians do it"

another lie that has been exposed by the pentagon. God can only know just how many more lies are left uncovered. my motto has been and continues to be: time is on MY side. from the NYTimes:

WASHINGTON, March 11 - Two Afghan prisoners who died in American custody in Afghanistan in December 2002 were chained to the ceiling, kicked and beaten by American soldiers in sustained assaults that caused their deaths, according to Army criminal investigative reports that have not yet been made public.

One soldier, Pfc. Willie V. Brand, was charged with manslaughter in a closed hearing last month in Texas in connection with one of the deaths, another Army document shows. Private Brand, who acknowledged striking a detainee named Dilawar 37 times, was accused of having maimed and killed him over a five-day period by "destroying his leg muscle tissue with repeated unlawful knee strikes."

The attacks on Mr. Dilawar were so severe that "even if he had survived, both legs would have had to be amputated," the Army report said, citing a medical examiner.

The reports, obtained by Human Rights Watch, provide the first official account of events that led to the deaths of the detainees, Mullah Habibullah and Mr. Dilawar, at the Bagram Control Point, about 40 miles north of Kabul. The deaths took place nearly a year before the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Among those implicated in the killings at Bagram were members of Company A of the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion, from Fort Bragg, N.C. The battalion went on to Iraq, where some members established the interrogation unit at Abu Ghraib and have been implicated in some abuses there.

The reports, from the Army Criminal Investigation Command, also make clear that the abuse at Bagram went far beyond the two killings. Among those recommended for prosecution is an Army military interrogator from the 519th Battalion who is said to have "placed his penis along the face" of one Afghan detainee and later to have "simulated anally sodomizing him (over his clothes)."

The Army reports cited "credible information" that four military interrogators assaulted Mr. Dilawar and another Afghan prisoner with "kicks to the groin and leg, shoving or slamming him into walls/table, forcing the detainee to maintain painful, contorted body positions during interview and forcing water into his mouth until he could not breathe."

American military officials in Afghanistan initially said the deaths of Mr. Habibullah, in an isolation cell on Dec. 4, 2002, and Mr. Dilawar, in another such cell six days later, were from natural causes. Lt. Gen. Daniel K. McNeill, the American commander of allied forces in Afghanistan at the time, denied then that prisoners had been chained to the ceiling or that conditions at Bagram endangered the lives of prisoners.

the times isn't being the good guy here. they're only publishing this after news had already leaked out about the reports, from such lefty sites as Human Rights Watch. it is the LEFT who are defending America, against the reich-wing who seek to destroy it.

from today's des moines register's letters to the editor, a beaut:

In "Christian Lawyers Say Bill, Bible Don't Mesh" (March 4), Sen. Charles Grassley is quoted to say Congress could not be bound by biblical mandates because "the Constitution does not provide for a theocracy." I've saved these wise words to my computer hard drive.
-Ben Masel,
Madison, Wis.

watching local nbc affiliate, and it is clear, they are kool-aid drinkers.

they do point out that support for the bushite plan has 'slowed to just 37%'.
awww. i'm surprised it's that high.

and last but not least of the bush FRIDAY FARTS:

House Democrats effectively shut down the chamber's ethics committee yesterday by refusing to approve Republican ethics rule changes that would limit the panel's power. The panel is unique in that it is evenly divided between the two parties, and the rule-change vote was deadlocked 5-5. "Democrats have chosen to shut down the ethics process," a spokesman for House Speaker Denny Hastert told the WP, adding, ahem, "It's up to the House Democrats to put the ethics process above partisan politics."

from slate's Today's Papers... required reading for the real American. in ya

from the POST

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld upheld the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan yesterday as powerful demonstrations of U.S. military prowess that will make other countries think twice about making "mischief" around the world.

Pressed by lawmakers on whether wear and tear on U.S. troops and equipment has impaired the Pentagon's ability to meet unforeseen global contingencies, Rumsfeld said U.S. commanders have assured him that "our military is capable of performing."

Rumsfeld acknowledged concern about stress on the force -- particularly the Army Reserve and National Guard. He said U.S. military equipment such as tanks, helicopters and Bradley Fighting Vehicles are wearing out at from two to six times the peacetime rate, leading the Pentagon to request $12 billion for equipment repairs in the fiscal 2005 emergency supplemental budget.

...

"The world has seen, in the last 3 1/2 years, the capability of the United States of America to go into Afghanistan . . . and with 20,000, 15,000 troops working with the Afghans do what 200,000 Soviets couldn't do in a decade. They've seen the United States and the coalition forces go into Iraq. . . . That has to have a deterrent effect on people," he testified before the House Armed Services Committee.

"If you put yourself in the shoes of a country that might decide they'd like to make mischief, they have a very recent, vivid example of the fact that the United States has the ability to deal with this," he said.

doesn't this scare anybody?
"create mischief"????

who the FUCK does he think he is anyway?????

as one on DU noticed also:

as the us has declined as a world supplier of economic goods and services, the need for the us to still act as a 'world player' and maintain our influence has given rise to our current use of machiavellian tactics to maintain our spheres of influence and scare away possible opposition to our leaders' agendas. meanwhile on a domestic scale, our leaders fight a war on us, the citizenry, the common person. they are systematically stripping us of our rights and privileges, forcing a large gap between the upper and lower classes, profiteering off of our ignorance, and promoting a climate of fear and anxiety to keep us quite and willing to accept these changes "for our own good." They use a wide range of tools including the military, yes, but not limited to it. the end result: an fascist-style oligarchy with theocratic undertones, in short Oceania. if only wells could see us now.

"we're trapped in the belly of this horrible machine, and the machine is bleeding to death"
--fushuugi

i may be breaking ranks with my democrat friends, but the new york times has gone from being the paper of record, to being the paper of refuse. they have sold their soul to the devil, drank the kool-aid, strayed away in an effort to come back due to scandals that were clearly (well maybe not so clearly to many of you) the work of those who operate from the core of the vast right-wing conspiracy hillary clinton exposed during her years as first lady.

SIGN THE PETITION!

SAVE YOUR RIGHT TO POST!

from the post:

Top military intelligence officials at the Abu Ghraib prison came to an agreement with the CIA to hide certain detainees at the facility without officially registering them, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post. Keeping such "ghost" detainees is a violation of international law.

Army Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan, who was second in command of the intelligence gathering effort at Abu Ghraib while the abuse was occurring, told military investigators that "other government agencies" and a secretive elite task force "routinely brought in detainees for a short period of time" and that the detainees were held without an internment number, and their names were kept off the books.
...

Jordan, in a statement that was included in the abuse investigation of Maj. Gen. George R. Fay, said that it was difficult to track ghost detainees and that he and other officers recommended that a memorandum of understanding be drafted between his 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, the CIA and the 800th Military Police Brigade "to establish procedures for a ghost detainee." An Army major at the prison "suggested an idea of processing them under an assumed name and fingerprinting them," but Col. Thomas M. Pappas, the top military intelligence officer there, "decided against it."

Instead, Jordan's statement said, Pappas "began a formalized written MOU [memo of understanding] procedure" in November 2003, with the CIA and members of Task Force 1-21, "and the memorandum on procedures for dropping ghost detainees was signed."

In his statement to investigators, also obtained by The Post, Pappas said that in September 2003, the CIA requested that the military intelligence officials "continue to make cells available for their detainees and that they not have to go through the normal inprocessing procedures." Pappas also said Jordan was the one who was facilitating the arrangement with the CIA.

Defense Department officials have said that there were as many as 100 ghost detainees held in prisons in Iraq but that the detainees slipped through the cracks and were not part of any official agreement. A Navy report issued yesterday said there was evidence of about 30 ghost detainees, but Pentagon officials said they could find no evidence of a signed agreement.

so, they LIED, and they GOT CAUGHT. what pages was this on again?

A16.

suffed sufficiently so it won't get picked up by any tv stations. sadly.
without the American people knowing the truth, they will continue to believe the lies.

and back in iowa..... like there's never anything going on here anyway, we have the illustrious head poopysniffer, steven king. i doubt there's any relation to the horror-story teller, however much similarity lies between them, but nonetheless, has admitted to playing games with the presscorp.

if i was a reporter for a newspaper, and found that one of our elected officials was "baiting" us, i would feel quite upset, irate, and justifiably angry.

"Apparently you did take the bait. ("P.S.: State Should Kill 'Official English' Too," March 3 Editorial.) It is a longstanding requirement that those seeking citizenship learn English. In fact, immigrants already have to take an English test in order to earn citizenship."
---Steve King,
member of Congress,
Iowa 5th district, Kiron.

as a favor for another fellow on DU, who thinks this story should hit the information superhighway, and so here we go.

from the local paper:

Louisville Metro Mayor Jerry Abramson said the White House turned down his request to welcome President Bush when Air Force One landed at Louisville International Airport.

Instead, Abramson said, he was offered a ticket to the Kentucky Center where Bush spoke.

But Abramson, a Democrat, said he turned that down because he had a previously scheduled meeting. Bush was greeted, among others, by Kelly Downard, chairman of the Metro Council's GOP Caucus.

Abramson said he was disappointed he didn't have the opportunity to welcome Bush as he had done with Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

so now they got byrd in their sights to destroy, and what are they going to use? that he is the most liberal member of the senate? wait, they said that about kerry. did kerry suddenly lose that status? and for what reason? when did byrd start being the 'most liberal member of the U.S. Senate'? these are questions, NONE of our lowlife soul-selling American(sic) presscorp are going to ask. karl rove would have a heart attack if he had to provide the answers.

i rarely get so bothered as i do whenever rummy opens his mouth. now he wants to advance the use of torture, for goals that are unachievable. it's the pleasure he gets from trying that most people don't see. but if you think for a minute that he's going to admit to being there goerring of the 21st century, think again. God knows. and I know.

from the NYT:

WASHINGTON, March 10 - The Pentagon is seeking to enlist help from the State Department and other agencies in a plan to cut by more than half the population at its detention facility in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in part by transferring hundreds of suspected terrorists to prisons in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Yemen, according to senior administration officials.

The transfers would be similar to the renditions, or transfers of captives to other countries, carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency, but are subject to stricter approval within the government, and face potential opposition from the C.I.A. as well as the State and Justice Departments, the officials said.

Administration officials say those agencies have resisted some previous handovers, out of concern that transferring the prisoners to foreign governments could harm American security or subject the prisoners to mistreatment.

A Feb. 5 memorandum from Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld calls for broader interagency support for the plan, starting with efforts to work out a significant transfer of prisoners to Afghanistan, the officials said. The proposal is part of a Pentagon effort to cut a Guantánamo population that stands at about 540 detainees by releasing some outright and by transferring others for continued detention elsewhere.

The proposal comes as the Bush administration reviews the future of the naval base at Guantánamo as a detention center, after court decisions and shifts in public opinion have raised legal and political questions about the use of the facility.

The White House first embraced using Guantánamo as a holding place for terrorism suspects taken in Afghanistan, in part because the base was seen as beyond the jurisdiction of United States law. But recent court rulings have held that prisoners there may challenge their detentions in federal court.

Indeed, the Pentagon has halted, for the last six months, the flow of new terrorism suspects into the prison, Defense Department officials said. In January, a senior American official said in an interview that most prisoners at Guantánamo no longer had any intelligence value and were not being regularly interrogated.

The proposed transfers would represent a major acceleration of Pentagon efforts that have transferred 65 prisoners from Guantánamo to foreign countries. The population at Guantánamo includes more than 100 prisoners each from Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, a senior administration official said, and the United States might need to provide money or other logistical support to make possible a large-scale transfer to any of those nations.

Defense Department officials said that the adverse court rulings had contributed to their determination to reduce the population at Guantánamo, in part by persuading other countries to bear some of the burden of detaining terrorism suspects.

Under the administration's approach, the State Department is responsible for negotiating agreements in which receiving countries agree "to detain, investigate, and/or prosecute" the prisoners and to treat them humanely.

"Our top choice would be to win the war on terrorism and declare an end to it and repatriate everybody," a senior Defense Department official said in an interview. "The next best solution would be to work with the home governments of the detainees in order to get them to take the necessary steps to mitigate the threat these individuals pose."

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that future transfers into Guantánamo remained a "possibility," but made clear that the court decisions and the burdens of detaining prisoners at the American facility had made it seem less attractive to administration policymakers than before.

"It's fair to say that the calculus now is different than it was before, because the legal landscape has changed and those are factors that might be considered," a senior Defense Department official said.

MIGHT BE CONSIDERED????

for God's sake, we have become the enemies we are fighting.

freedom on the march huh.
this is george w. bush's idea of freedom. torture more, kill more, and create as much chaos and misery as possible, while providing a more enjoyable experience through it all by pilfering the treasury, otherwise known as taxcuts. where is their sacrifice? WHAT is their sacrifice? will someone with SAO status answer that question please?

from the daily kos, which gets yahoo feed-status, so they must be doing something right, er, correct.

DeLay breaks ethics rules. Again.by kos
Thu Mar 10th, 2005 at 10:51:39 PST

Jesus, how many times can this guy make a mockery of ethics before House GOoPers start worrying about their own private Rostenkowski moment?

A delegation of Republican House members including Majority Leader Tom DeLay accepted an expense-paid trip to South Korea in 2001 from a registered foreign agent despite House rules that bar the acceptance of travel expenses from foreign agents, according to government documents and travel reports filed by the House members [...]

DeLay was accompanied to Seoul by Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Ander Crenshaw, both Florida Republicans [...]

The purpose of the trip is spelled out in documents filed with the Justice Department by the Alexander Strategy Group, a firm created by former DeLay chief of staff Ed Buckham that boasts dozens of large corporations and trade associations among its clients. Buckham is close to DeLay, and associates of both men say that DeLay agrees to meetings with corporate officials on Buckham's recommendation.

DeLay is claiming ignorance.

Luntz' strategy memo argues Republicans should continue to run against DC and associate Democrats with DC. It's a lot easier for Democrats to heed the advice, since Republicans control all levers of power in the capital. There is rank corruption in DC, and it all comes from those in charge. Republicans.

Democrats can and must be the party of reform. DeLay and his cronies can't help but give us new ammunition almost daily to make our case.

delay is a scumbag, and the more the GOP support him, the more they deserve everything they get for associating themselves with the bugman.

ever notice how he even LOOKS like a bug?

as an add-on to the previous post about dirty tricks the GOP used this last election season, (i actually was looking for the website of GOP marketplace, but *gasp!* it doesn't exist), and then it dawned on me.

from google:
Results 1 - 10 of about 19,400 for +"DNC" +"dirty tricks". (0.37 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 40,600 for +"GOP" +"dirty tricks". (0.65 seconds)

geee, what does that say to you?

josh marshall has been a wonder, keeping us abreast on the situation with social security, but has been keeping an eye on another GOP malfeasance. seems he's on to something.

The Executive Director of the New Hampshire Republican party, Chuck McGee, has just resigned because the state party hired a telemarketing firm to jam the phone lines of the Democratic get-out-the-vote operation last election day. The immediate cause of his resignation actually appears to be the fact that he lied to The Manchester Union Leader for the article they published breaking the story in this morning's paper.

Now, in the free-for-all world of political telemarketing, there's what you might call an evolving standard for what's just playing hardball and what's way out of bounds. (What sounds criminal to some, is just ... well, 'innovative' to more creative minds.) But I think this clearly qualifies as way, way out of bounds. Indeed, it may have broken New Hampshire state laws against phone harassment. And New Hampshire authorities, in addition to pursuing the matter themselves, have passed the case on to the Justice Department.

The New Hampshire GOP hired 'GOP Marketplace' -- a Virginia-based telemarketing firm run by a Republican operative named Allen Raymond -- to do the deed. Actually, they subcontracted the deed to a phone bank shop out in Idaho, Milo Enterprises.

Now the New Hampshire GOP still seems to be claiming that they hired GOP Marketplace for their own get out the vote efforts. The argument seems to be that the state party paid for get-out-the-vote. But by the time the word got passed on to Milo Enterprises it had turned into instructions to make countless five-second hang-up calls to phone numbers of the Democratic coordinated campaign offices as well as the offices of the Manchester firefighters union, which was also doing get-out-the-vote work that morning. The state party's story still seems to be evolving.

Now, to refresh my memory, I went back and looked up the point spread on Senator John Sununu's close-call victory over out-going Governor Jeanne Shaheen. He won with 51% to her 47% with a Libertarian candidate picking up the other 2%. Honestly, that's too big a spread to overcome with solid phone banking, especially because this effort seemed to get cut short after a couple hours when Verizon intervened.

But cheating isn't okay just because you probably would have won anyway. What's more, was the New Hampshire GOP really the only state party getting these services from 'GOP Marketplace'? This sounds like an 'innovation' that a go-getter firm like 'GOP Marketplace' would want to peddle all over the place. There were a lot of close races last November. Did this happen anywhere else? Who else got help from 'GOP Marketplace'?

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2003_02_02.php#000625

given the climate of 'activist judges' it was bound to happen. first chicago (i'll have to dig up that link later), and now one in atlanta. wanna bet it's not directly related to talk radio spewing hate towards anything not red?

ATLANTA - A judge presiding over a rape trial was shot to death Friday along with two other people at the Fulton County Courthouse, authorities said. A fourth person was wounded and a search was under way for the suspect, the defendant in the trial.

Yahoo

all this talk about social security is no doubt, obscuring the real issue. what that real issue is of course, is up for debate. but one doesn't need any debate on whether or not the bush administration is telling the truth when it comes to social security, and it's plans to privatize it.

sure, social security is needing some tweaks. what doesn't. especially one that involves so many people and so much money, it has GOT to require tweaks over time. but like all things bushite, there's a right way of doing it, and then there's the bushite way of doing it. and i can tell you without hesitation, they are not one and the same.

so the issue shouldn't be about whether or not social security needs any changes. the issue should be about how best to do it. seems to me. the way they have been doing it so far, has been a pretty good job.

has anybody ever thought about how the logic behind the thinking of those who live in the 'red' states, is fundamentally flawed. simply because, not everybody could possibly be 'like them' because, being 'them' requires not being 'them'.

whereas the liberal 'g'head be what you wanna be' is something the whole world can adopt and thrive with.

another tidbit in TP that caught my eye:

The NYT off-leads and others report that a major overhaul of bankruptcy laws long sought by the credit card industry is likely to pass the Senate after lawmakers rejected, by a 53-to-46, near-party-line vote, a Democratic amendment that had scuttled the measure in previous years.

"The free ride is over for people who have higher incomes and can repay their debts," crowed Sen. Chuck Grassley. Except, oops: The WSJ points out inside that wealthy individuals are less likely to feel the impact of the legislation because of "significant loopholes" that allow them to shield their assets from creditors.

even chucky baby knows that, but being the good republicon stooge, he'll put on the dog and phony show for the bushites.

boy this was just the thing i needed to wake up to this morning.... from slate's Today's Papers:

Just a day after Beirut played host to a large anti-Syria rally festooned with red-and-white Lebanese flags, the New York Times and Washington Post lead with the even more massive pro-Syria rally organized by Hezbollah under the exact same flags (along with some fetching portraits of Syrian President Bashar Assad). USA Today and the Wall Street Journal world-wide news box lead with President Bush's speech on democracy and the Middle East, in which he repeated his demand that Syria withdraw from Lebanon.

sorta speaks for itself. seems to me that the majority have clearly spoken, and they didn't side with what lil' ol' junior wanted. "his demand"???? who the fuck does he think he is ordering other countries to do his bidding, when, obviously, it's clearly not what the majority wants.

oh wait, he's had plenty of practice being a dictator back at home.

from the WaPo

The 147-page report, by the Democratic staff of the House Rules Committee, is called "Broken Promises: The Death of Deliberative Democracy" and is described on the cover as "A Congressional Report on the Unprecedented Erosion of the Democratic Process in the 108th Congress," which ended at noon on Jan. 3.

"In the 108th Congress, House Republicans became the most arrogant, unethical and corrupt majority in modern Congressional history," the report begins. "When they took control of the House after the 1994 elections, Republicans vowed they would be different than previous Congresses."

(snip)

Rep. Louise M. Slaughter (N.Y.), the top Democrat on the Rules Committee, said that the method by which Republicans run the House and their procedures "are moral decisions."

"Over the past two years, the Republican leadership ignored House Rules and the basic standards of legislative fairness and decency with an impunity that is unprecedented in the history of the House of Representatives," she said in a statement.

beam me up scotty! what's absurd is pumping 400 rounds into a car without any provacation.

Responding to Sgrena's statement that the car may have been deliberately targeted, McClellan said. "It's absurd to make any such suggestion, that our men and women in uniform would deliberately target innocent civilians.


"That's just absurd," McClellan repeated.

Yahoo

what's absurd is pumping 400 rounds into a car that posed no threat.

a good theory on the checkpoint murders posted on DU:

IF it were true that someone the American troops had decided to set up an *impromptu* road block, it would have stopped the car and then the troops could have fired on the car driving THROUGH THE BLOCK. That's not at all how it's described-plus how is it that the hail of bullets wouldn't have killed the driver, too, unless they were from the side of the vehicle. It's also fishy how, according to another article, "The shooting late on Friday was overheard by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's office, which was on the phone with one of the secret service agents, said Scolari. "Then the US military silenced the cellphones," he charged." If we were to believe that this was an accident, then we also have to believe that the Americans themselves make the roads drastically, randomly unsafe for anyone driving at normal speeds on a highway, putting residents at risk by not properly stopping them but firing on them at irregular points, and then covering up firings by ensuring that no one can make phone calls, and not allowing ambulance relief for extended periods of time.Imagine that happening, with, say, a drunken driver road block in this country. You're driving down the highway, and you see, off to the side, where you don't expect it, someone waving at you and shining a flashlight-you keep going because you don't know what the heck it is, and you get automatic rounds fired into your car FROM THE SIDE into your backseat, killing your passengers. When you then stop, the people who fired won't let you go to hospital and confiscate your cell phone so you can't alert anyone.

i wonder how many lies the bushies are going to get caught in. seems one gets exposed just about every week. they're desperate. and to think, they've got faux, cnn, msnbc, nbc, abc, radio.... and untold millions in PR work, and STILL cant win. that's pathetic if ya ask me.

from today's des moines register:

The dispute is whether FDR believed Social Security should eventually be replaced by personal retirement accounts. Some backers of President Bush's proposal for personal accounts make that claim.

Careful reading of Roosevelt's original messages doesn't support the claim.

The confusion arises from FDR's January 1935 message to Congress that accompanied the recommendations of the committee on which Wallace and Hopkins served. One sentence from the message refers to "the old-age pension plan, which ought ultimately to be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans."

That sounds as if Roosevelt wanted Social Security to someday be replaced by private plans, but in the context of his entire message that's not what he was saying. The "old-age pension plan" he wanted to supplant was not Social Security. It was a temporary measure to provide relief in the interim before Social Security could take effect. The "self-supporting annuity" was not a reference to private accounts. That was how FDR referred to Social Security itself - as an annuity self-supported by workers through payroll taxes.

In other words, Roosevelt was saying the temporary plan for old-age relief should be supplanted by Social Security. He was NOT envisioning private accounts replacing Social Security. (The texts of all presidential messages on Social Security are available on the Social Security Web site - www.ssa.gov/history).

where is the picture???

does this thing really fuckn work? dear Lord, if it does, i take back all that i said about google. their toolbar blog button sucks donkey. 

boy i'm sure busy today, and it's like 66 outside, sunny but windy. i should be outside. but no, i have work to do here where i must get the evidence documented. take this post. it's the hypocrisy of the republicons who say they're going to simplify the tax code, only to really make it so much more difficult (like it could possibly get any more difficult)... from the post:

Since 2001, American taxpayers have had no greater friends than the members of Congress.

Through last fall, lawmakers in that period enacted five major tax bills, three containing the words "tax relief" in their names and the other two featuring "jobs creation" in their titles. So why, then, does the nation need a President's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform, which recently set up shop and began looking for ways to revise the tax laws?

If you haven't done your tax return yet, you're about to find out.

The Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001, the Job Creation and Worker Assistance Act of 2002, the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Act of 2003, the Working Families Tax Relief Act of 2004 and the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 have taken a tax system that was already complicated enough and turned it into a kaleidoscope of annually changing brackets, limits and rules.

Provisions blink on and off like lights in Times Square. Benefits scheduled to expire are extended -- or allowed to expire and then extended. Benefits scheduled to phase in are suddenly accelerated, but their scheduled expiration date is left in place.

all this backpedaling by the republicans is making me dizzy. but what stands out about this story, is the number of journalists who have been killed, and not knowing just how many were killed by American forces. from the post:

What CNN chief news executive Eason Jordan said, or didn't say, in Davos, Switzerland, last month has become a burgeoning controversy among bloggers and media critics.

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who attended the World Economic Forum panel at which Jordan spoke, recalled yesterday that Jordan said he knew of 12 journalists who were killed by coalition forces in Iraq. At first, said Frank, "it sounded like he was saying it was official military policy to take out journalists." But Jordan later "modified" his remarks to say some U.S. soldiers did this "maybe knowing they were killing journalists, out of anger.

. . .

He did say he was talking about cases of deliberate killing," Frank said.

Jordan denied that last night, saying he had been responding to Frank's comment that the 63 journalists who have been killed in Iraq were "collateral damage" in the war. "I was trying to make a distinction between 'collateral damage' and people who got killed in other ways," Jordan said last night. "I have never once in my life thought anyone from the U.S. military tried to kill a journalist. Never meant to suggest that. Obviously I wasn't as clear as I should have been on that panel."

...

Frank said he found Jordan's remarks "troubling" and in a later phone conversation asked him for specifics about the journalistic casualties so he could make inquiries at the Pentagon. Jordan said Frank was responding to a note from him and that there had been a "misunderstanding" if the congressman expected a further response. Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), who was in the audience, "was outraged by the comments," said his spokesman, Marvin Fast. "Senator Dodd is tremendously proud of the sacrifice and service of our American military personnel."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6490-2005Feb7.html

sometimes it just takes a foreigner to get the point across:

New Delhi, March 5: If anti-Americanism is the brand name then few sell it better than Hugo Chavez. This time round, the Venezuelan President wants to market it in India in his bid to make the country’s leadership aware of the “danger” that George W. Bush poses to the world.

“I have nothing against the American people or the American society. But how can one maintain any relations with the US government which lies about almost everything to its people and the world,” Chavez said.

...

Chavez poked fun at George W. Bush for being the worst liar and regaled journalists by comparing the US President with a unfaithful husband who tries to convince his wife that the lipstick marks on his face are not from his lover but from a clown.

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1050306/asp/nation/story_4460004.asp

and finally, we see an article in the post about credit card companies that i think should be required reading for all high school students.

For more than two years, special-education teacher Fatemeh Hosseini worked a second job to keep up with the $2,000 in monthly payments she collectively sent to five banks to try to pay $25,000 in credit card debt.

Even though she had not used the cards to buy anything more, her debt had nearly doubled to $49,574 by the time the Sunnyvale, Calif., resident filed for bankruptcy last June. That is because Hosseini's payments sometimes were tardy, triggering late fees ranging from $25 to $50 and doubling interest rates to nearly 30 percent. When the additional costs pushed her balance over her credit limit, the credit card companies added more penalties.

would the United States still have invaded iraq had 9/11 not happened?

why is nobody asking this question? what is the administration's answer to this? actually, asking this administration anything and expecting a straight truthful answer is rediculous. but why is nobody asking this? could it be that they know the answer, and are letting the bushies off the hook by not putting them in the position of having to answer? this is what i mean we used to have a watchdog press, not the lapdog press we have now.

david yepsen, who has claimed the title of Poopyhead Of The Year for 3 years running, surprises the state with his column today on how the republicans in iowa have abused the trust of it's citizens. astonishing actually because i never thought i'd see the day when he would go after people in his own party. but he did. and did a bang-up job doing it.

Republicans in the Iowa House are deadbeats. They don't pay their debts.

Recently, the GOP majority in the Iowa House released its budget plan for the coming fiscal year. Buried in the fine print was this fact: They don't intend to repay about $1.5 billion in various trust funds they've pilfered in recent years to make their budgets balance.

We know Republicans in Washington are losing their fiscal discipline. It looks as if the virus is spreading to their cousins at the state Capitol.

At issue is the state's practice of spending more than it collects in annual revenues. It's done that for the past eight years by taking one-time money from various cash reserves, emergency funds and trust funds.

House Republicans propose to just walk away from about $1.5 billion of this debt and never repay it. They plan to stiff the tobacco settlement fund, part of which was to be used to curb smoking and defray the cost of it to Iowa. Other funds that won't be repaid include ones for the environment, state and school infrastructure, underground storage tank cleanups, Area Education Agencies, trails, ground-water protection, brucellosis and tuberculosis eradication, snowmobile, value-added agriculture, victims compensation, waste tire removal, hospitals and aviation.

In other words, the taxes and fees Iowans have paid into various trust funds over the years for specific things have wound up being used for something else.

It seems you just can't trust a trust fund.

GOP leaders say they don't want to raise taxes to repay the funds. Fine. They don't need to. Tax revenues are pouring into the state coffers at better than expected rates. Last week the Legislative Services Agency said tax revenues are running a hefty 6.8 percent ahead of last year. That's a bigger raise than most workers are getting. If lawmakers simply hold the line on spending, they'll have money for reserve funds. If they raise the cigarette tax, they'll have even more.

It's sad to see Republicans become people who walk away from their obligations. Their candidates are fond of campaigning for office as champions of "traditional Iowa values." Isn't repaying your loans a traditional Iowa value? Isn't keeping your word - trust - a traditional Iowa value?

Taking money from Iowans for one purpose and then using it for something else may be quite justifiable on a temporary, emergency basis. Making it a permanent thing just makes people cynical. In business, it's called fraud.

Republicans also like to posture themselves as people who bring good Christian principles to public office. That's commendable. One of those principles is that during good times you set aside something for the lean times ahead.

if this ponzie scheme the republicons are putting out such a good way of making social security stronger and solve the solvency problem, then, why isn't the federal government 'investing' in those same stocks they say will provide a return of 8% in 30 years, now?

what happens in lebanon will be controlled by people in a war room.

guess who likes war rooms?

well well wellllllll....... there were rumors, but everytime they got mentioned, they were always associated with those evil ennvironmental terraists.

KEY WEST, Fla. (AP) - The Navy and marine wildlife experts are investigating whether the beaching of dozens of dolphins in the Florida Keys followed the use of sonar by a submarine on a training exercise off the coast.

More than 20 rough-toothed dolphins have died since Wednesday's beaching by about 70 of the marine mammals, Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary spokeswoman Cheva Heck said Saturday.

A day before the dolphins swam ashore, the USS Philadelphia had conducted exercises with Navy SEALs off Key West, about 45 miles from Marathon, where the dolphins became stranded.

Navy officials refused to say if the submarine, based at Groton, Conn., used its sonar during the exercise.

from the guardian