Letter Of The Day

In responding to a question on stem-cell research, President Bush said he is "opposed to taking a life in order to save a life." Isn't that what war is all about? The war he launched based on faulty information has cost the lives of more than 1,700 brave Americans so far. Yet he opposes using clumps of a few dozen cells, which are biologically more primitive than a mosquito, to help medical science potentially cure terrible diseases that affect us and our children. What on Earth is our president thinking? Is he thinking?

-Alan L. Light,
Iowa City.

--source

liars cheats and thieves

"the military always lies" was a statement made by the mother of a fallen soldier in vietnam. and it's still true today.

The military said Tillman was killed by enemy fire while barking orders to troops and maneuvering up a hill. The truth: He was killed by "friendly fire," and higher-ups knew it within a week after his death. But they didn't share it. Instead, they seemed intent on preserving the image of a soldier who had become their recruiting poster boy.
...
Now the truth is known. An investigation by the Washington Post revealed details about the "friendly fire" incident. Fellow troops mistook Tillman for the enemy. After they shot him, the soldiers burned his uniform and body armor, which destroyed the evidence. Tillman's parents have accused the military of using their son's death to bolster patriotism back home. They are furious about the lies they were told.
...
Those lies hit close to home for Iowan Peg Mullen. Her son, Michael, was also killed by "friendly fire." Not in Afghanistan, in South Vietnam. The year was 1970.

...
Two soldiers. Two deaths. A generation apart. A 1970 military that couldn't be honest. A 2005 military that again wasn't honest.

--source

the check21 law

this is one of those laws that was written STRICTLY for the benefit of financial institutions.

what makes this so evil is that it works to the detriment of someone else. and 3 guesses as to who that someone else would be.

thats right folx, we have legislators WE elected to fuck us with laws like check21. where are the legislators that fight for the average joe like you and me? why didn't they come up with a plan that would put financial institutions in the same boat as their customers. no more waiting for check clearing.

hahah, it wont ever happen while we have a republican president, a republican house of representatives (sic) and a republican senate. and pretty soon a republican judiciary.

kinda makes ya feel good allll over duznt it.

Quote of the Day

"Memorial Day should be a time of repentance, atonement and apology. Until we get that straight, we're doomed to keep kidding ourselves and covering evidence of our mistakes with flags and shovels of dirt."
-Herb Strentz,
Urbandale.

attribution

tax-exempt doctors making $2,000,000.00

if anything were put into words that expressed my deepest beliefs about what is wrong with health care today, it would be this paragraph from today's des moines register:

Hospitals enjoy tax-exempt status as charitable organizations. If you're the doctor earning $2 million, you may think the hospital is pretty charitable. But such eye-popping salaries should raise questions about giving these institutions a free ride on income, property and sales taxes.

and now we begin

today i officially start putting The Hitchhiker's Guide to Life together. i got moveable type running, and so far so good. i would just prefer different template. maybe i can incorporate one of the blogger templates. all these trackback pinging things are makin me dizzy.

Quote of the Year

this is the one folx, that sums it all up:

"What does it mean to me? I want government to stand up for working people, for the middle class, rather than representing, as is currently the case in the United States, multinational corporations and wealthy people.

"I also believe that as citizens in a democratic society people are entitled to certain inherent rights — and those rights include the right to health care, the right to form a union, the right to breathe good air, the right to send your child to college.

"There is something fundamentally wrong and very dangerous about a society in which so few have so much and so many have so little,"

--8 term Representative of Vermont, Bernie Sanders

(attribution)

message to bernie sanders: YOU GO!!

"The government that we have today in the White House, the House of Representatives with Tom Delay, the Senate with Bill Frist, is the most right-wing, extremist government, perhaps in the history of the United States," he tells labor activists at a May Day celebration in the century-old Labor Hall.

"Time after time they pass legislation that benefits the rich and the powerful, and they pass legislation that hurts the middle class, working people and low income people."

The crowd roars. They have come to hear this unlikely man who is likely to be the next U.S. senator from the Green Mountain State, and they love what they hear. This is Bernie at his best: one part revivalist preaching, two parts theater, all served up with a biting sarcasm.

--source

the apple on the tree is ripening

it's not very often i am able to report on something good happening in congress, but today i take joy reporting about this one:

At a time when Congress has been torn by partisan battles, 24 ideologically disparate leaders representing the health care industry, corporations and unions, and conservative and liberal groups have been meeting secretly for months to seek a consensus on proposals to provide coverage for the growing number of people with no health insurance.

--NYT

reading between the lines

you know what this tells me?

For its part, the NYT frets about the lack of campaigning; it suggests that "most crucial decisions have been made in backroom deals."

it tells me that the NYT knows that backroom deals are rife in American politics, yet we campaign like hell. so why is the NYT 'fretting'? trying to play like foxnews plays?

runners up for Letter of the Day

The May 8 Opinion section displayed a quotation next to the photograph of Charles Krauthamer, a conservative columnist for the Washington Post. With his typical arrogant smugness, Krauthamer suggested that liberals are "sawing on the branch" that President Bush has so bravely ventured out upon with his Social Security "reform" initiatives, and "as usual, Democrats are offering no alternatives. . . ."

In contrast, directly above this quotation was a column by Richard Cohen extolling an example of exactly what Krauthamer suggests is nonexistent: an alternative! Cohen was advocating a change that has been echoed by many as a viable fix for the supposed crisis faced by Social Security: lifting the income cap so that those who earn more than $90,000 will no longer be exempt from paying Social Security taxes on that income.

I hope readers are discerning enough to recognize that Democrats are indeed offering alternatives, but that the neocons discount any ideas that would not involve the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.

-Julie Ryder,
Waukee.

--attribution

I am disturbed by President Bush's plan to turn National Public Radio into another Pollyanna, cheerleading-type network like Fox "News" by appointing a right-wing ideologue to "reform" it. Bush needs to look up "reform" in the dictionary. It doesn't mean "subvert for propaganda purposes."

-John Christensen,
Storm Lake.

--attribution

Letter Of The Day

I'm quoting from C.M. Krueger's letter to the editor: "There's only one media network in these perilous times that doesn't slant the news. Anyone in the know knows that only Fox News Network gives the news as its happening."

Sir, I sincerely hope that you were joking. In my opinion, Fox News Network is the most biased network on the air. I myself am not a Republican, nor am I a fan of President Bush, but I have friends who are extremely radical Republicans, and even they have the sense to realize that Fox News Network is extremely biased toward Republicans. Mr. Krueger, if you truly suggest others to "broaden their capacity for news absorption," then you should suggest that they watch more than one network.

Also, you said that you connect with God and that "your God loves those of us who are proud of our president." I've always been taught and truly believe that God is not politically biased. He is not a Republican or a Democrat, nor does he love anyone more or less because of their political preference.

Your inference that God loves Republicans more than people of other political parties is offensive, and if you ask me, I think you owe the public an apology, especially those of us who aren't Republicans. You should also think twice before publically insinuating that God loves Republicans more than anyone else.

--attribution

bubble boy bush and his neverland ranch living

WASHINGTON - In the rarified club of world leaders, President Bush has taken his share of lumps. Critics have railed against his handling of Iraq, his perceived disdain for the United Nations and what they say is a swaggering approach to foreign policy.

But Bush probably would not want to trade places with any other head of state.

Nearly all his fellow leaders of the world’s big industrial democracies have stumbled. It has left them vulnerable at home and weakened on the world stage.

The president, through it all, is riding what he sees as a strong re-election mandate to trumpet his goal of spreading democracy.

Stronger position
That helps explains why Bush, despite a slip in his approval rating among Americans, may find himself holding the stronger hand when he travels in early July to Scotland for the annual summit of the leaders of the eight major industrialized democracies.

“His counterparts all face ill political winds that make their domestic positions rather precarious,” said Charles Kupchan, director of European studies with the Council on Foreign Relations, a private research group. “I do think it puts Bush in an advantageous position.”

--source

from louvian on DU:

Can you guys see how the News Media is putting the crap on the Internet!!!

I mean this is probably the worst reported story I saw today!!!

Total Propoganda Total!!!

and it shows Bush is so much in control of the US Media they are bowing and fawning all over him but I did take something from this article

ALL BUSH"S BUDDIES ARE FAILING in their COUNTRIES so the COALITION has taken its toll on EVERY FRIEND of BUSH!!!

moveable type is a beast

it's not saving any of my posts. i have NO idea why, but its being a prick. and frankly i just dont have time to be screwin around with it.

damn it all anyway

i have to retype about a hundred entries from one blog to be entered into moveable type.

as much as i'm proud to get moveable type up and running, it sure is lacking in that import functionality.

*shrug*

its not like i'm on a deadline here either.

the alternate universe of dumbya

ANNAPOLIS, Md. — The U.S. military is on the offensive in the War on Terror (search) to prevent terrorists from reaching America's shores, President Bush said Friday, adding that 20 years from now, historians will look back on the Iraq war as "America's golden moment."
--fauxnews

its a shame that we have a president who is so full of himself that he would make such arrogant remarks in public.

what a pathetic little man.

what a pathetic little man

"You know, when I was one time campaigning in Chicago, a reporter said, would you ever have a deficit? And I said, I can't imagine it, but there would be one if we had a war, or a national emergency, or a recession. (Laughter.) Never did I dream we'd get the trifecta. (Laughter.)"
--george bush, jr.

--SOURCE

move over tom delay, there's a new kid on the block

and his name is thomas noe. and he's poised to take delay's crown away for being the most inventive thief-of-the-night this year.

But this week, Mr. Noe's lawyers said that as much as $13 million of the state's $50 million investment in his two funds could not be accounted for. Mr. Noe, meanwhile, has become the focus of at least six investigations or audits involving either his handling of the coin investments or his campaign fund-raising. Federal investigators are also looking into his contributions to President Bush's 2004 campaign as a "Pioneer," raising more than $100,000.

--source

Quote of the Day

"Several months ago Texas state Sen. Gonzalo Barrientos stated, "These people don't want to govern, they want to rule." He was referring to Republicans in the Texas Legislature, but his statement certainly applies to the Republicans currently in power on the national scene."
-Gene Watson,
Des Moines.

attribution

Letter Of The Day

Calling the compromise made on the "nuclear option" a good deal ("Senators Make Deal, Avoid Fight on Judges," May 24) reminds me of the guy who comes out of the casino and says, "I won a hundred bucks!" but fails to tell you he left thousands there the week before.

Republicans can laugh behind closed doors because they got exactly what they wanted: to push through judges who have drawn fire from civil-rights, women's-rights, public-interest, religious, environmental and labor groups, are fanatically loyal to big business, oppose protection for gays and are rigidly right wing.

They extracted this so-called deal from Democrats by simply changing the subject. "We won't fight about judges anymore . . . we'll eliminate what little power you have left (the filibuster) in a GOP-controlled Senate and you will be so worried about that, you'll cave to our demands."

Through this "concession" they can appear "reasonable" while continuing to consolidate power through judicial appointments. Not only Democrats got snookered. We all did.
-Mary Ann Dorsett,
Des Moines.

attribution

Joke Of The Day

and her name is condoleeza rice. ms. rice, they're not laughing with you hun, they're laughing at you.

bwahahahaha

"The United States is as open a society as you will find," she said, and the administration is being held accountable "by a free press, by a Congress that is a separate and co-equal branch of government, and by its own expectations of what is right."

--source

tell me someone, does she actually believe that nobody is smart enough to see right through such utter contempt for human dignity?

JAG, the epic jimmy American gagfest.

can JAG be so stupid as to think that Americans will buy this episode as just "something only on tv" when they mimic what is happening over in iraq?

remember, the bushite people got real cozy with hollywood before 9/11. hollywood knew they had a job ahead of them.

does the name posada ring any bells?

if you were around say, oh 30 years ago, you may remember this character from iran/contra. the crack shippin son of a bitch made billions on Americans' addiction, and was a bushite favorite from early on. that alone should be enough to indict the cocksucker on any number of treasonous crimes. and once again, he's able to make the president of the united states extend the law to protect this terrorist from ever seeing justice in venezuela. a real chapter in how fucked up American politics got during the immediate post-reagan era.

WASHINGTON - (KRT) - The Bush administration on Friday turned down the Venezuelan government's arrest request for Luis Posada Carriles, the anti-communist militant charged in that country in connection with the bombing of a Cuban airliner in 1976.

A State Department official said the decision, made by the departments of Justice and State, was conveyed through a diplomatic note sent Friday afternoon to the Venezuelan embassy in Washington.

"The provisional arrest request was not legally sufficient for the issuance of an arrest warrant in the United States," said the State Department official, who did not wish to be identified.

The official questioned Venezuela's motives for filing the request, saying that the government in Caracas has filed such requests with the United States before and knows how the system works.

Recently declassified U.S. government documents show that Posada was on the CIA payroll in the 1960s.

Posada, 77, is seeking asylum in the United States. He was arrested last week by immigration officials in Miami and charged with illegal entry. Posada faces a hearing on the charges June 13.

A Department of Homeland Security official who requested anonymity said the response to Venezuela's extradition request did not alter the government's case against Posada - namely that he entered the United States illegally - and said he will be held without bond until a June 13 arraignment in El Paso, Texas.

Prosecutors are expected to pursue a deportation order against the Cuban militant, who in turn has filed an asylum claim to try to block his removal.

While Cuba and Venezuela are off the table, immigration courts have the option of deporting Posada to any other country that agrees to take him, as long as he would be safe there.

--source

chavez wants this guy, and by all accounts, should get him without question. notice how the bushites aren't all over the 24/7 news channels patting themselves on the back for 'catching a terrorist'. shameful isn't it.

and speaking of people that hate us

Thousands of Muslims marched Friday in Islamic countries from Asia to the Middle East, burning symbols of America to protest the alleged desecration of the Quran by military personnel at a U.S. prison in Guantanamo, Bay, Cuba.

The rallies in Pakistan, Egypt, Lebanon, Indonesia, Malaysia and elsewhere followed an admission Thursday by U.S. investigators that Islam's holy book was mishandled at Guantanamo. But American officials claimed it was often inadvertent and denied that any Qurans were flushed down a toilet, as Newsweek magazine had reported in a now-retracted article.

--source

the reich-wing create their crises, to justify fixing them

this is just too funny, and frankly, a bit disconcerting.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger traveled to a quiet San Jose neighborhood Thursday, and -- dogged by protesters -- filled a pothole dug by city crews just a few hours before, as part of an attempt to dramatize his efforts to increase money for transportation projects.

The choreographed press opportunity -- at least the governor's fourth recent event involving transportation issues -- seemed aimed as much at thwarting the demonstrators who have followed Schwarzenegger for weeks as grabbing new attention for his proposal.

Schwarzenegger strode toward television cameras on Laguna Seca Way to the sounds of the Doobie Brothers' "Taking it to the Streets,'' while flanked by 10 San Jose city road workers wearing Day-Glo vests and work gear. After speeches by the governor and city officials, a dump truck backed up and unloaded a mound of black asphalt and, as television cameras recorded the moment, Schwarzenegger joined the work crew, taking up a broom and filling the 10-by-15-foot hole, later smoothed over by a massive roller truck.

"I'm here today to let everyone know that we're going to improve transportation all across our state,'' said Schwarzenegger, highlighting his proposal to fully fund Proposition 42 and restore $1.3 billion in transportation money to the current state budget.

--source

why they couldn't have found a pothole already in the streets is beyond me. maybe the gropinator thinks he's still a (washed-out) actor on a movie set.

lies, coverups and other reasons for them to hate us exposed

whenever the reich-wing nuts can't understand why America is hated by so many iraqis, they should be forced to read the following:

An unarmed Iraqi cooperated with American troops searching his house and said "USA good" minutes before he was shot to death, a former U.S. soldier testified Wednesday at his one-time squad leader's murder trial.

Jason Pizer testified that the Iraqi was alive with Army Staff Sgt. Shane Werst when Pizer went to a translator to check the Iraqi's identification against a list of suspected insurgents.

Pizer said he radioed back to Werst to confirm the man was on the list. He said he then heard Werst say, "Expecting contact," and then the sound of gunfire. Pizer said he returned to the house and found Naser Ismail's body on the floor.

Werst, 32, is on trial on charges of premeditated murder and obstruction of justice in the January 2004 slaying of Ismail, which prosecutors say was in retaliation for a mortar attack that killed an Army captain earlier that day.
--source

and look what happens when you're a wall-streeter:

FORT HOOD, Texas - An Army staff sergeant was acquitted of murder Thursday in the death of an unarmed Iraqi he said he shot to save a fellow soldier.

A jury of four soldiers and two officers deliberated for less than three hours before finding Staff Sgt. Shane Werst not guilty of premeditated murder. He had faced a maximum of life in prison without parole.

Before the jury announced the verdict, the judge, Col. Theodore Dixon, found Werst not guilty of obstruction of justice. Dixon said he decided to rule on that count, but did not give an explanation.
--source

this just makes me sick. how in the fuck can a soldier be defending himself from an UNARMED person?

hmmmm, there's a lesson here somewhere

A day after Iranian officials said they would extend the freeze on their nuclear program, the NYT goes inside with news that the World Trade Organization announced it would start negotiations to admit Iran as a member. The decision came through after the United States, who had blocked Iran from joining the organization more than 20 times throughout the years, removed its opposition.

seems to me that the u.s. was being stingy and greedy with iran, and had no right to act surprised that iran wasn't cooperating.

what a shamj

ya know, when i read of 'investigations' like this, i think of how saddam probably handled investigations.

Pentagon investigators looked into 13 allegations that the Quran had been treated improperly and determined that eight of them were unfounded. Out of the five cases of Quran mishandling that Pentagon officials identified, which all the papers except USAT front, three were labeled as probably deliberate, while two were probably accidental. The general in charge of the investigation made a point of emphasizing that they had found "no credible evidence" that a guard flushed a Quran down the toilet. The general said they interviewed the detainee who, according to an FBI report, had raised the issue of a Quran being flushed, and they determined his account lacked credibility, although he was never specifically asked about the incident.

--slate's Today's Papers

amnesty international is making waves again

and God i pray that they're big ones.

WASHINGTON, D.C., May 26 (OneWorld) - Rights watchdog Amnesty International urged foreign governments Wednesday to investigate and prosecute President George W. Bush much as they once did former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.

''If the United States permits the architects of torture policy to get off scot-free, then other nations should step into the breach,'' William Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International USA, said in a statement launching Amnesty's annual report.

Bush is among a dozen former or current U.S. officials who should be probed by foreign governments because Washington has failed to conduct ''a genuinely independent and comprehensive investigation'' of torture allegations against U.S. troops, commanders, and their civilian overseers, Schulz said.

Others on the Amnesty list of potential targets for investigation and prosecution include Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) chief George Tenet.

''If the U.S. government continues to shirk its responsibility, Amnesty International calls on foreign governments to uphold their obligations under international law by investigating all senior U.S. officials involved in the torture scandal,'' Schulz said.

''If those investigations support prosecution, the governments should arrest any official who enters their territory and begin legal proceedings against them,'' he added. ''The apparent high-level architects of torture should think twice before planning their next vacation to places like Acapulco or the French Riviera because they may find themselves under arrest as Augusto Pinochet famously did in London in 1998.''

Torture and other grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions amount to crimes against humanity and therefore all states have a responsibility to investigate and prosecute people responsible for them, Amnesty said in its 308-page report.

--source

in an un-related, yet related, proceeding:
http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2004/Afghanistan-Criminal-Tribunal10mar04.htm

Joke of the Day

House Majority leader Tom Delay fired off a letter to NBC Universal Television Group President Jeffrey Zucker Thursday calling "a failure of stewardship of our public airwaves," and a "brazen lack of judgment" a shot taken at him during NBC's Law & Order: Criminal Intent finale May 25.

According to a transcript exerpt supplied B&C by Delay's office, the show's finale features a white supremacist who kills a judge's family, and the killing of an appellate judge. As the detectives hunt for the judge killer, one says: "Maybe we should put out an APB for somebody in a Tom DeLay T-Shirt."

--B&C

those activist judges are at it again

doesn't this judge know, he's causing riots & chaos?

oh wait, he's only allowing the world to see what is the cause.

NEW YORK (AP) -- A federal judge has told the government it will have to release additional pictures of detainee abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, civil rights lawyers said.

Judge Alvin Hellerstein, finding the public has a right to see the pictures, told the government Thursday he will sign an order requiring it to release them to the American Civil Liberties Union, the lawyers said.

The judge made the decision after he and government attorneys privately viewed a sampling of nine pictures resulting from an Army probe into abuse and torture at the prison. The pictures were given to the Army by a military policeman assigned there.

ACLU lawyer Megan Lewis told the judge she believes the government has pictures of abuse beyond the Abu Ghraib images that sparked outrage around the world after they were leaked to the media last year.

--the AP

ASTOUNDING!

GO SEE THIS!!!

http://www.freedomunderground.org/memoryhole/pentagon.php#Preloader

HYPOCRISY ALERT!

and it's a red hot alert too

FORT BRAGG, N.C. - In a pep talk to thousands of paratroopers Thursday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld likened al-Qaida's reportedly wounded chief in Iraq to a cornered Adolf Hitler during the final days of Nazi Germany.

"Like Hitler in his bunker, this violent extremist, failing to advance his political objectives, now appears committed to destroying everything and everyone around him," Rumsfeld said.
--source

God what a sad excuse for a human being. don't they call this sorta thing, in psychological terms, projection?

galloway to tour the U.S.

god i'd love to see him too.

LONDON -- Maverick British lawmaker George Galloway, who captured headlines this month during a fiery Senate appearance, plans on continuing his anti-war theme during a summer speaking tour of the United States.

Galloway appeared after the Senate committee released documents it claimed showed he and other international figures received valuable oil allocations from Saddam as a reward for opposing U.N. sanctions on Iraq. Galloway allegedly received 20 million barrels' worth between 2000 and 2003.

He vehemently denied the accusations and went on to accuse the U.S. of crimes in Iraq.

"As Oscar Wilde said, sometimes the most bitter trials turn out to be blessings in disguise," Galloway said Thursday. "In America, people pay huge sums of money to hear you speak."...

newsday
as someone on DU answered on why galloway wouldn't ever be on hannity & colmes:

They wouldn't dare have him on with them - they know they couldn't bully him, and he would use the opportunity to tell the truth. They would be shown to be the corupt fools they are, and more people would start asking the iimportant questions. Nope, they'd run and hide from him.

The Dems really need to taking notes: Galloway's Way To Face The Neocons 101.

ya, galloway would show them the gallos.

Quote of the WeeQ

"Bush seems to have a hypnotic allure"
--Jim Thompson, who protested george jr.'s visit to rochester ny

attribution

Quote of the Day

"See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda."
--george bush, jr. (in trying to explain how he lives in some alternate universe)

attribution

DeLay Watch

The treasurer of a political committee formed by U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay violated Texas election code by not reporting hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions, a judge ruled Thursday in a civil case brought by Democratic candidates.

sfgate

i wonder how long it'll be before bugman goes to jail.

the numbers

i used to have a series in ia.talk.misc called "the numbers" where i would post the latest polls showing how Americans were feeling at any given point in time.

i think i'll start the series here.

Four months into his second term, President Bush is increasingly viewed as being out of touch with the American people, according to a CBS News poll.

Six in ten Americans say the president does not share their priorities, while just 34 percent say he does – the lowest numbers for Mr. Bush since the eve of his first inauguration. If there's any solace for Mr. Bush, it's that even fewer people, just 20 percent, say Congress shares their priorities.

Overall, slightly more Americans (48 percent) disapprove of the job the president is doing than approve (46 percent).

While Mr. Bush continues to push hard for his Social Security plan, and has recently spoken out on issues like stem cell research and the fight over judicial nominees, the public is far more concerned with the war in Iraq and the economy.

CBSnews

the "awww, shucks" story of the day

rummy's whining about people having access to 24-hour news again.

Rumsfeld didn't delve deeply into specifics in his brief talk with members of the civic group. But in the recent past, news outlets have broadcast messages from terrorist groups, or reported stories that have fueled rage against Americans in the Muslim world.

"This is really the first war in history that is being conducted in an era of multiple global satellite television networks, 24-hour news outlets with live coverage of terrorist attacks, disasters and combat operations," Rumsfeld said.

He said U.S. officials must also deal with "a global Internet with universal access and no inhibitions, e-mail, cell phones, digital cameras wielded by anyone and everyone" and "a seemingly casual disregard for the protection of classified information, resulting in a near continuous hemorrhage of classified documents, to the detriment of the country."

The defense secretary was among those who complained earlier this month following deadly riots in Afghanistan after Newsweek published a story that U.S. interrogators desecrated a copy of the Quran at Guantanamo Bay. The magazine later retracted the story amid questions about its truthfulness.

yahoo

it really gets me, right here (thumpin my heart), whenever we have a bushite whine about the media. then i have to laugh with a roar at the sheer comedy of it.

freedom of religion is a cornerstorne of our democracy

and looks like, if more judges like this one are allowed to bench, another nail in the coffin of democracy.

An Indianapolis father is appealing a Marion County judge's unusual order that prohibits him and his ex-wife from exposing their child to "non-mainstream religious beliefs and rituals."

The parents practice Wicca, a contemporary pagan religion that emphasizes a balance in nature and reverence for the earth.

Cale J. Bradford, chief judge of the Marion Superior Court, kept the unusual provision in the couple's divorce decree last year over their fierce objections, court records show. The order does not define a mainstream religion.

indystar

mainstream? what would that be? christianity only? this country is slowly moving towards what we used to think of being third world sad.

another American loser

IT decision-makers in U.S. businesses and government agencies want better Internet security and easier network management, but few see the next-generation Internet Protocol called IPv6 as helping them achieve their goals, according to a survey released Tuesday by Juniper Networks.

networkworld

America has lost being the leader in sooooo many areas, and in such a short time, you have to wonder, what the fuck are these jokers at the top smoking.

Word of the Day

OLIGARCHY
Pronunciation: 'ä-l&-"gär-kE, 'O-
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -chies
1 : government by the few
2 : a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes; also : a group exercising such control
3 : an organization under oligarchic control

bush brags about spreading democracy to other countries, yet look what he's doing to it in his own yard. he's a hypocrite through and through. solid, bona-fide grade-A HYPOCRITE. if you ever want to know what he's up to, just listen to what he says. then think opposite.

more edvidence that WSJ is rabid

from TP:

In the name-calling wars: Everybody notes that Amnesty International launched a big broadside against the U.S., calling the treatment of detainees "atrocious" and dubbing Gitmo a "gulag." The Journal's editorial page, never one to get riled, in turn proclaims that Amnesty's take "amounts to pro-al Qaeda propaganda."

BUSTED!

the military:

In trying to establish some veracity into the Newsweek story -- again, there was no specific allegation. There was an alleged allegation, if I could put it that way. But in trying to establish some veracity behind that story, which now Newsweek has basically told us don't try, because e you won't be able to, we've nonetheless -- the commander of the U.S. Southern Command, which is responsible for Guantanamo, has been doing a review of detainee operations in Guantanamo, going back pretty much to the beginning of when we were conducting detainee operations, to determine is there something about -- which we should be more focused on. It has not -- those types of allegations and -- about the willful desecration of the Koran as a component of interrogations or how it was described --

Q The allegations …

MR. DI RITA: No, no, no, let me finish. Those types of allegations have not previously been -- there's -- we've not previously included that in any kind of previous investigations into detainee operations, because there haven't been credible allegations to that effect. And we've tried to pursue specific, credible allegations carefully, and we think we've done that.

defenselink

and now from WaPo:

The International Committee of the Red Cross said yesterday that it repeatedly expressed concern to the U.S. government in 2002 and early 2003 about a series of credible detainee allegations that military guards at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba had mishandled and shown disrespect to the Koran.

someone's lying, and it's not hard to tell who. just ask yourself, who's been caught lying many, many, MANY times before?

Letter Of The Day

The administration has done it again. In the aftermath of the Newsweek scandal, the Bush White House has used an incident of faulty reporting to turn attention from its own misdoings.

When CBS screwed up documents concerning the president's National Guard record, talk of Bush's still highly questionable military history faded. Now, by attacking a single sentence of a tucked-away magazine article, public outrage has shifted from the proven accounts of prison abuse to the minor actions of a bumbling news publication.

Government spin has overtaken the media and looks to be leaving the public dizzy.
- Chris Sigmund, Johnston

attribution

the death knell of Democracy

this story, and it's underlying implications, are frightening and alarming.

and inside look into America's new nazi-ism, neocon-ism, whatever. the thing it is NOT is democracy. i'm cuttin pretty close to crossing the copyright line, but fuck it. patriotism is driving me to post it. from the WaPo:

"Every president grabs for more power. What's different it seems to me is
the acquiescence of Congress," said former representative Mickey Edwards
(R-Okla.), a government scholar at the Aspen Institute.

When Republicans won control of the House in 1994, conservatives turned an institution run by Democrats and veteran chairmen into a top-down organization that looked in some ways like the flow chart of a Fortune 500 business. The idea was to put power in the hands of a few leaders and place conservative loyalists in the most important lower-level jobs to move legislation as quickly as possible through Congress, according to current and former lawmakers.

Those who cross party leaders often pay a price, usually by losing positions of influence. Most recently, Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.) lost the chairmanship of the Veterans Affairs Committee after clashing with party leaders over spending and other issues. At the same time, loyalists are rewarded. The result, writes
American University's James A. Thurber in a forthcoming book on Congress and the presidency, is less powerful representatives facing increased pressure to carry
out their leadership's wishes.With control over the House Rules Committee, which
determines which bills make it the floor, how they will be debated and whether
they can be amended, Republicans have made it much harder for Democrats to offer alternatives -- for example, a smaller tax cut than one Republicans advocate.
Democrats also are increasingly shut out of the final negotiations on
legislation between the House and the Senate before bills are sent to Bush for
his signature.Bush created a top-down system in the White House much like the
one his colleagues have in Congress. He has constructed what many scholars said
amounts to a virtual oligarchy with Cheney, Karl Rove, Andrew H. Card Jr.,
Joshua Bolton, himself and only a few others setting policy, while he looks to
Congress and the agencies mostly to promote and institute his policies.
President Bill Clinton oversaw a transition of government away from strong
agencies, which historically provided a greater variety of opinions in
policymaking. "On the surface it looks like Bush is doing this better than
Clinton, but there is much more going on," said Paul C. Light, an expert on the
executive branch.

Light said Bush has essentially turned most of the agencies
into political arms of the White House. "It's not just weakening agencies but
strengthening political control of the agencies," he said.

Major policies such as Social Security are produced in the White House, while Cabinet heads and their staffs are tethered. After the 2004 election, the White House began requiring Cabinet members to spend as long as four hours a week working in an office near the West Wing....Bush has demanded similar loyalty from GOP lawmakers -- and received it. Republicans have voted with the president, on
average, about nine out of 10 times. Critics and some scholars charge that the
Congress now seldom performs its constitutional duty of providing oversight of
the executive branch through tough investigations and hearings.

This has coincided with a dramatic increase in overall government secrecy. In 1995, the government created about 3.6 million secrets. In 2004, there more than 15.5 million, according to the government's Information Security Oversight Office.
The White House attributes the rise in information the public cannot see to the
security threats in a post-Sept. 11, 2001, world.

But experts on government secrecy say it goes beyond protecting sensitive security documents, to creating new classes of information kept private and denying researchers access to documents from past presidents.

"We have never had this kind of control over information," said Allan J. Lichtman, a professor of history at American University. "It means policy is being made by a small clique without much public scrutiny."

Now, the Republicans, with the support of the White House, are
looking to reshape the courts in their image. The Senate's bipartisan compromise
on judges will cost the president a few of his nominees to the appeals court but
will require him to secure only 50 votes for future picks for the Supreme Court
and other openings. If Democrats filibuster, Bush and Republican senators can
move again to pull the trigger on the "nuclear option" and, if successful,
prevent the minority party from ever again using the filibuster on judges. "I
will not hesitate to use it if necessary," Frist said this week.
Judiciary Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) has been assigned by GOP leaders to look for new ways to provide oversight of the federal courts and tougher discipline for judges. In a recent interview he said some judges have
"deliberately decided to be in the face of the president and Congress." Senate
Republicans are weighing legislation to limit court authority, as well.

as a poster on DU commented:

This entire article is worth reading. VandeHei describes how the Republicans
have consolidated power in the hands of a few, with dissent stifled; how control
is accomplished; how government departments are little more than political arms,
to serve the conservative agenda; how the goal is to put all three branches of
government in the service of this conservative agenda; how all of this is being
done in unprecedented secrecy.

why do i think bush stole the '04 election?

i'm posting this as a way of archiving the information. from a post on DU :

http://dailykos.com/story/2004/11/18/81044/392 (non funct. links in the story striken out to avoid confusion) by markusd Thu Nov 18th, 2004 at 05:10:44 PDT (...) It is not based on exit polling that we can't get the internals of (although I have BIG doubts about the exit polling/ actual results discrepancy) but on a reliable set of data - and it's not being put out by a partisan but by a well- respected statistical expert and his team of graduate students. It is thorough, fully documented, and makes a damning case that the E-Voting numbers in Florida are way off, and totally in Bush's favor. I say that we should bombard the media with this one - it is time to get this out there. THE LINK TO THE STUDY IS: http://ucdata.berkeley.edu / go down the page a bit - it's right under VOTING. COMPUTERWORLD ARTICLE LINK: http://www.computerworld.com/governmenttopics/governmen... / 0,10801,97614,00.html AND HERE'S THE REPORT FROM WIRED NEWS ALONG WITH THE FIRST FEW GRAFS. http://www.wired.com/news / evote/0,2645,65757,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_1 Electronic voting machines in Florida may have awarded George W. Bush up to 260,000 more votes than he should have received, according to statistical analysis conducted by University of California, Berkeley graduate students and a professor, who released a study on Thursday. The researchers likened their report to a beeping smoke alarm and called on Florida officials to examine the data and the voting systems in counties that used touch-screen voting machines to provide an explanation for the anomalies. The researchers examined the same numbers and variables in Ohio, but found no discrepancies there. Their aim in releasing the report, the researchers said, was not to attack the results of the 2004 election in Florida, where Bush won by 350,000 votes, but to prompt election officials and the public to examine the e-voting systems and address the fact that there is no way to conduct a meaningful recount on the paperless machines. The analysis -- which hasn't been formally peer-reviewed, but was examined by seven professors -- showed a discrepancy in the number of votes Bush received in counties that used the touch-screen machines and counties that used other types of voting equipment. The researchers examined numerous variables that might have affected the vote outcome. These included the number of voters, their median income, racial and age makeup and the change in voter turnout between the 2000 and 2004 elections. Using this information, they examined election results for the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates in the state in 1996, 2000 and 2004 to see how support for those candidates and parties measured over eight years in Florida's 67 counties. They discovered that in the 15 counties using touch-screen voting systems, the number of votes granted to Bush far exceeded the number of votes Bush should have received -- given all of the other variables -- while the number of votes that Bush received in counties using other types of voting equipment lined up perfectly with what the variables would have predicted for those counties. The total number of excessive votes ranged between 130,000 and 260,000, depending on what kind of problem caused the excess votes. The counties most affected by the anomaly were heavily Democratic.

let the games begin

WASHINGTON — The CIA is conducting a war game this week to simulate an unprecedented, Sept. 11-like electronic assault against the United States. The three-day exercise, known as "Silent Horizon," is meant to test the ability of government and industry to respond to escalating Internet disruptions over many months, according to participants.

--yahoo

new krak!

poopy got a new home today. krak is new, and improved!

it just keeps getting hotter and hotter

and pretty soon, it's going to explode somewhere. and newsweek is probably wondering what the fuck they were doing bending over for the bushite people the way they did and retracted that story. the WaPo has this to say:

Numerous detainees at the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba told FBI interrogators that guards had mistreated copies of the Koran, including one who said in 2002 that guards "flushed a Koran in the toilet," according to new FBI documents released today.

The summaries of FBI interviews, obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union as part of an ongoing lawsuit, also include allegations that the Koran was kicked, thrown to the floor and withheld as punishment and that guards mocked Muslim prisoners during prayers.