goat, the new red meat

everytime i hear "goat" i am reminded of 7 long minutes while our country was under attack, where george bush jr. sat reading MY PET GOAT in some elementary school in florida.

Letter Of The Day

Thanks for printing Rick Johnson's Nov. 12 letter, "Take Out Your Dictionary." Of all the letters to the editor I've read in recent years, this sure did say a lot — especially to all those Americans that are so obsessed with attaching the words liberal or conservative to every political issue that comes up, as if there is no room for negotiation or compromise. All that does is create animosity and foil democratic discourse.

-Don Hill, Windsor Heights.
attribution

talk about rewriting history

i knew it wouldn't be long before rummy got into the action:

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has asserted that he did not press for the US-led invasion of Iraq, as public disaffection for the US military operation there reaches new highs.

--source

i'll jus leave it up to the rest of the world to prove otherwise. even kindergarteners will find the task immensely easy.

and now the brits have to get into the act

British-trained police operating in Basra have tortured at least two civilians to death with electric drills, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.

John Reid, the Secretary of State for Defence, admits that he knows of "alleged deaths in custody" and other "serious prisoner abuse" at al-Jamiyat police station, which was reopened by Britain after the war.

Militia-dominated police, who were recruited by Britain, are believed to have tortured at least two men to death in the station. Their bodies were later found with drill holes to their arms, legs and skulls.

The victims were suspected of collaborating with coalition forces, according to intelligence reports. Despite being pressed "very hard" by Britain, however, the Iraqi authorities in Basra are failing to even investigate incidents of torture and murder by police, ministers admit.

The disclosure drags Britain firmly into the growing scandal of officially condoned killings, torture and disappearances in Iraq. More than 170 starving and tortured prisoners were discovered last week in an Interior Ministry bunker in Baghdad.

American troops who uncovered the secret torture chamber are also said to have discovered mutilated corpses, several bearing drill marks

--source

jeee, i guess all that's missing are poland's contributions.

do you know anybody else who could say to you

i am holding a year's worth of cum in my testicles.

boy THAT was fast!

talk about corrupt sons of bitches.... asscroft gets to wear the crown today. from the WaPo:

WASHINGTON -- Less than a month after Oracle Corp. hired former Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft's lobbying firm, the Justice Department notified Oracle that an antitrust inquiry into its proposed $5.8 billion acquisition of a rival database software firm had been dropped

as someone along the way mentioned:

While he's on his knees pretending to pray to Je$u$.

how stupid can they get?

pretty friggin stupid, if the GOP really thinks they can sink murtha with their whining. if they want to play that game, they are in no position to be pointing fingers. and like all things repuke, it'll backfire.

Republican lawmakers say that ties between Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) and his brother’s lobbying firm, KSA Consulting, may warrant investigation by the House ethics committee.

--rollcall

Quote Of The Day

"The Republicans are taking food out of the mouths of children to give tax cuts to America's wealthiest. This is not a statement of America's values,"

--Democratic leader, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., after seeing the GOP deliver themselves a $3,100 pay raise.

attribution

down with diebold

the diebold is fighting transparency speaks volumes about their desire to have fair elections.

In a last-minute filing, e-voting equipment maker Diebold asked a North Carolina court to exempt it from tough new election requirements designed to ensure transparency in the state’s elections. Diebold obtained an extraordinarily broad order, allowing it to avoid placing its source code in escrow with the state and identifying programmers who contributed to the code.

--source

Letter Of The Day

Chuck Grassley has belatedly threatened to close the barn door after $2.9 million of his promised 50 million tax dollars for the rain forest have been spent. On what? Do we as taxpayers get an accounting?

There are four requirements for a genuine rain forest. A year-round, near-vertical sun. Pure rain water. Poor laterite soil. Bugs — billions of them. Iowa can't supply the first three and wouldn't attract many visitors with the fourth.

—Ian Binnie, Des Moines.

attribution

Quote of the Day

"We're asking very traditional questions: Was information withheld? Was there deceit about the information? Those are the familiar Watergate/Iran-contra questions. But they overlook the Ideology of Information that the administration created. By this I mean the whole practice of evaluating all information going into the war not for its truth value, but for whether it promoted or hindered the administration's goal of being free to go to war. The President could have been given every bit of intelligence information available, and he and/or Cheney would have reached the same decision because they would have discarded, discounted, or disregarded most of it. Information that was Useful to that goal was put in one box, Not Useful put in another. Entire categories of information were assigned to the Not Useful box because their source was deemed an opponent of U.S. military action, or assumed to have some other motive."
--Mark Schmitt

didnt halloween pass already?

then what's going on with this kid?
http://www.pantheones.com/images/avatars/large/167.jpg

murtha on cheney

i'm linking this to josh marshall's site, but i had read it in one of the papers earlier.

Murtha on Cheney: "I like guys who've never been there that criticize us who've been there. I like that. I like guys who got five deferments and never been there and send people to war, and then don't like to hear suggestions about what needs to be done."

if i'm not careful, i'm likely to reproduce the whole column here

another TP gem. this time it's about the pat act. and the favor business gets when their feathers get ruffled. remember all the excuses the repukes used when liberals were pissed off about how the act infringed on our rights? well, now that business is whining, congressional leaders are all ears now.

Everybody mentions that the tentative deal to extend the Patriot Act hit a snag as some Democrats threatened to filibuster. Also, a bipartisan group of six senators said they'll vote against renewing the about-to-expire law unless the civil-liberties protections are strengthened.

The WSJ notices that among those lobbying against the renewed Patriot Act are the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business lobbies. Apparently they don't like the idea of the government snooping on company records.

also from today's papers

they seem to be full of shockers today.

but then, when you're reporting on criminals and thieves in our government, what else would you expect?

The Post and NYT both front the arrest of two U.S. men for allegedly rigging rebuilding contracts in Iraq. But only the NYT picks up on the real shocker: One of the men was a U.S. government comptroller and financial officer in Iraq "despite having served prison time for felony fraud in the 1990's." He oversaw $82 million in contracts.

what else would you expect from pathological liars?

caught over on today's papers:

Also, the papers play up the U.S. embassy saying, "We have made clear to the Iraqi government there must not be militia or sectarian control or direction of Iraqi Security Forces, facilities or ministries." Which is very nice and very misleading. The reality seems to be that the U.S. long ago acceded to such control.

and he's not even a democrat

"We face a demographic tsunami" that "will never recede," David Walker tells a group of reporters. He runs through a long list of fiscal challenges, led by the imminent retirement of the baby boomers, whose promised Medicare and Social Security benefits will swamp the federal budget in coming decades.

The breakfast conversation remains somber for most of an hour. Then one reporter smiles and asks, "Aren't you depressed in the morning?"

Sadly, it's no laughing matter. To hear Walker, the nation's top auditor, tell it, the United States can be likened to Rome before the fall of the empire. Its financial condition is "worse than advertised," he says. It has a "broken business model." It faces deficits in its budget, its balance of payments, its savings — and its leadership.

Walker's not the only one saying it. As Congress and the White House struggle to trim up to $50 billion from the federal budget over five years — just 3% of the $1.6 trillion in deficits projected for that period — budget experts say the nation soon could face its worst fiscal crisis since at least 1983, when Social Security bordered on bankruptcy.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-11-14-fiscal-hurricane-cover_x.htm#

woo hoo

i just ordered my mac. my first mac. and probably my last.

Item #00683806
Manufacturer Part No. M9592LL/A
PM G5 2.5GHZ DUAL CORE QUAD 512/250/660
Quantity: 1
Price: $3,294.00
Extended Price: $3,294.00

Item #00699911
Manufacturer Part No.
*HTC* 2GB RAM KIT/INSTALL PM QUAD
Quantity: 1
Price: $278.99
Extended Price: $278.99

Item #00570667
Manufacturer Part No.
WIRELESS KEYBOARD/MOUSE/HUB SPECIAL
Quantity: 1
Price: $75.99
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Item #00609175
Manufacturer Part No. C11C627001
STYLUS CX4200 AIO PRINTER
Quantity: 1
Price: $99.00
Extended Price: $99.00


Order Totals:
Subtotal: $3,747.98
Tax: $0.00
Shipping, handling and processing: $59.99

Grand Total: $3,807.97

from CLUBMAC

things you probably never knew

another letter writer in today's register opened my eyes to bush's nominee sam alito.

Is President Bush out of his cotton-picking mind? Samuel Alito supported a strip-search of a 10-year-old girl. He opposed the family medical leave act. He supported requiring a husband be informed before a women may get an abortion. He allowed discrimination based on race and disabilities. This man cannot possibly be the best possible candidate for the Supreme Court.

(written by Alice Haugen, Iowa City.)

Letter Of The Day

The Rev. Pat Robertson warned the residents of Dover, Pa., that they have angered God by voting intelligent-design proponents off the local school board. Since intelligent design does not claim God as the designer, why would God be angered? Robertson has confirmed what many suspected. Intelligent design is simply creationism in disguise.

-Laurie Howland, West Des Moines.
attribution

they're confirming white phosphorus in fallujah

US troops used white phosphorus as a weapon in last year's offensive in the Iraqi city of Falluja, the US has said.

"It was used as an incendiary weapon against enemy combatants," spokesman Lt Col Barry Venable told the BBC - though not against civilians, he said.

The US had earlier said the substance - which can cause burning of the flesh - had been used only for illumination.

--source

and as someone on DU mention, and put it so adeptly:

The R's will now say DUers don't support our troops and applaud when Blackwater contractors are Bar-B-Que'd . Then the Rush Limballs of the world will chime in saying same.

The atrocities of the Blackwater guys and the use of WP in Fallujah go hand in hand with guerilla war just as in Vietnam. Occupation spawns this.

With "Hama Rules", which means no rules at all as Thomas Friedman has shown us in From Beirut to Jerusalem, playing to the Arab world media, which showed the Blackwater atrocity, is now forcing them to show the Fallujah pictures. This is what happens when the US military 'takes the gloves off'.

Bush's role in creating this war in Iraq with phoney pretexts and no end in sight, the current Republican hijacking of the Democratic Levin amendment today as proof of that -- it still leaves no exit strategy or timetable-- means that the R's will claim to be supporting the troops while keeping them in place for more losses in a war whose purpose is STILL ill-defined.

Are they there to secure the oilfields ? There to 'promote democracy', whatever that means in a region content to vote in Islamic theocracies ? There on a military holiday so to speak in order to test new weapons and strategies ? WTF are they there for ? Bush's annual press conferences never seem to get this answered.

yup. back when the italians were pissed off about it, good ol' rummy was washing it as white as possible. no pun intended. but this thing needs to be exposed and stopped.

liars beget liars

A White House document shows that executives from big oil companies met with Vice President Cheney's energy task force in 2001 -- something long suspected by environmentalists but denied as recently as last week by industry officials testifying before Congress.

surprise surprise

why MSM has lost their collective credibility

gets summed up rather nicely in today's papers:

There are "allegedly" bad headlines in the torture stories. For example, the Post: "TORTURE ALLEGED AFTER U.S.-LED RAID UNCOVERS IRAQI-RUN PRISON." As NYT notes, "An Interior Ministry statement said flatly that torture had occurred." So, what's it take to move something from an allegation to an apparent fact?

One final point on the torture coverage: The papers mention that there have long been "rumors" about torture by the new Iraqi government. What there has also been is scant coverage of the torture that's been documented. Human Rights Watch released a report early this year titled "Torture and Ill-treatment of Detainees in Iraqi Custody." Judging from a quickie Nexis search, of the majors only the WP gave it more than wire copy. And then there was the time six months before that when GIs witnessed and photographed Iraqi police torturing prisoners. The Oregonian reported the story, and the national papers let it fly by. The guy the Oregonian suggested was behind the abuse: the then-head of the Interior Ministry.

Letter Of The Day

Sen. Chuck Grassley voted last week against a proposal to boost the fiscal 2006 budget for the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program from $2.2 billion to $5.1 billion. Iowa currently has 180,426 households with unpaid energy bills, an average of 1,822 households per county.

MidAmerican Energy currently charges almost double the rate for natural gas from a year ago.

Grassley's attempt to balance the federal budget on the backs of the poor, disabled and geriatric is pathetic. He supports pouring $2 billion a week into the rat hole called Iraq, while low-income Iowans freeze in their homes. Grassley probably keeps his sows warmer than some of these people will be this winter.

-David Brewbaker, Indianola.

attribution

Letter Of The Day

David Yepsen ("Gingrich Preaches Radical Reconstruction of GOP," Nov. 3) stated Newt Gingrich was the architect of the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives in 1994.

Yepsen failed to mention that Gingrich used family values and how the Republicans were morally superior to the Democrats.

Gingrich is a hypocrite. Gingrich served his first wife with divorce papers while she was in the hospital with ovarian cancer.

His second wife of 19 years was informed over the telephone that Newt wanted a divorce. Newt then married a young staffer 23 years his junior.

I ask, are these family values, compassionate conservatism or just plain hypocrisy?

-Steve Stanley, Earlham.

attribution

FARPOINT.FACTOID

"It is virtually certain that on Jan. 1, 2006, some dual eligibles will not be receiving prescription drug coverage under [Medicare]," the lawsuit said. "There is no way to know with certainty how many will fall through the cracks this way. However, even if the [current] enrollment process captures 97% of all dual eligibles, more than 180,000 will not be enrolled."
--source

what else would you expect from pathological liars?

remember this?

“We do not have any direct evidence that Iraq has used the period since (Operation) Desert Fox to reconstitute its WMD programs,” Tenet said in an agency report to Congress Feb. 7, 2001. “Moreover, the automated video monitoring systems installed by the UN at known and suspect WMD facilities in Iraq are still not operating… Having lost this on-the-ground access, it is more difficult for the UN or the U.S. to accurately assess the current state of Iraq’s WMD programs.”

so much for that lie. what's your next lie gonna be georgie? that white is black again?

Quote of the Day

"The country can't get past what has happened or move forward until we can get the truth on the table, deal with it and move on."
--Josh Marshall, attribution

mehlman's sad sorry excuse for existence

is that he lies like a rug. and yesterday, on MTP, he was in shining mode, telling so many lies, in so little time, it was impossible to catalog them all without tape.

the best writeup i've seen yet of this advernture throught the looking glass, is josh marshall:

One was that the Senate intel report exonerated the administration of any effort to mislead the American people over Iraq. Wrong. They specifically did not look at that question.

He also said the Silbermann/Robb Commission concluded the same thing. Wrong. They too were specifically not authorized to examine that question.

He said the British Butler Report said the same thing. First of all, who cares what a Report written to cover Tony Blair said? Second of all, it said no such thing.

He said the Duelfer Report said Saddam "was trying to reconstitute his weapons programs." That is at best a highly, highly misleading description of the report.

He said that Saddam "had supported terrrorists, had terrorists operating out of his country." There are so many different lies and canards potentially underlying this claim it's hard to know where to start. But again, wrong. None of the purported evidence for this claim has ever stood up.

Letter Of The Day

Bully for Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid ("Democrats Force Senate Into Rare Closed Session," Nov. 2). It is high time the minority party exercised some intestinal fortitude with regard to our adventure in Iraq. Forcing the Senate into closed session was an excellent first salvo.

Now the focus ought to be on what convinced the Bush administration to go to war that the previous administration and our allies did not see when looking at the same flawed intelligence. Inquiring minds still want to know, and Senator Reid has artfully posed the question.

-Jeff Clothier, Colfax.

attribution

and finally....

"This Drug Benefit Brought to You By…": Before TP went to www.medicare.gov he accidentally typed in www.medicare.org. This took him to a site purporting to be "A Resource for Medicare Information," with an official-looking seal—featuring a bald eagle—at the top. He clicked on the "Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit" link and was taken to … www.gop.com. Needless to say, TP found no information about the drug benefit. Instead, he was invited to sign a petition in favor of Judge Alito and to read about the strong and valuable leadership of Sen. Rick Santorum.

my my my, those republicons never tire do they.

FARPOINT.FACTOID

Even before the (French) riots, an average of 3,500 cars a month were burned across the nation.

attribution

wanna read a scary story?

The LAT's investigation, the first of four parts, shows how conservatorship is virtually unregulated in California. Most conservators are friends or family members of the elderly charge, but the 15 percent who are professionals typically take control with startling swiftness. About half the time, an elderly person loses control of his life and assets in emergency court hearings lasting just a few hours. In 90 percent of these hearings, the court never bothers to interview the elderly person. The professionals who become conservators have the power of attorneys and accountants, yet never have to pass licensing exams. Anyone with a college degree and $385 for a state registration fee can get in the business. When the elderly charge fights his conservator in court, he must pay both his own legal fees and those of his conservator.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-conserve13nov13,0,4940740,full.story

beware of republicons who charge democrats with rewriting history

because, that's exactly what they're up to.

a worthy ready

it's not often that i read the front page of DU, (here's where i declare my $10/month membership), but this one was a worthy read by all.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/05/11/12_believe.html

read it and tell me that it's not true. i dare ya.

any narnia fans out there?

this was mentioned on DU about narnia:

It is the big daddy who makes the rules and doesn't tell you what they are and requires that you live your life by them and as means to his end, and judges you by them and bestows rewards or imposes punishment on you when you die, except you really don't die, according to whether he likes you or not content.

shit, you cant unquote out of this damn GUI on blogger. i hate their shit. but if that's what narnia is really all about, i think i wanna take a gander at it.

Paragraph Pick of the Day

Dana Milbank and Walter Pincus, in a Page One WP fact-check, note that the administration's defense—that Congress saw the same intelligence as the White House before the war and that independent commissions have determined the intelligence to have been represented accurately—is not quite true.

(thanks to today's papers for their patriotic service to America)

Letter of the WeeQ

After the last election I made the statement that mass education was not working in America. Well I was wrong. President Bush's approval rating is down to 34 percent, Vice President Dick Cheney's is down to 19 percent. The public can be educated — it just takes time.

—William Tempelmeyer, retired special education teacher, Marshalltown.

attribution

i jus happen to know bill tempelmeyer. he used to come into the tallcorn hotel where i worked as a bartender.

Letter Of The Day

today, you get to make the choice. which letter would you pick to win LOTD?

Why do President Bush and Vice President Cheney continue to fight Sen. John McCain's amendment to codify what is the armed forces' official stance on torture?

This is from the White House's official statement on the matter: "The administration strongly opposes such amendments, which would interfere with the protection of Americans from terrorism by diverting resources from the war to answer unnecessary or duplicative inquiry or by restricting the president's ability to conduct the war effectively under existing law."

Set aside the fact that torture has been shown to be ineffective. Ignore the fact that we condemn such behavior in other countries (such as Saddam's Iraq), or that the Army's own guide to conduct explicitly forbids such behavior.

Ask yourself this question: Why is President Bush willing to exercise the first veto of his two terms in office to allow torture? And then ask yourself this: If the president is successful, are you still proud to be an American citizen?

—-Jeff Dickey-Chasins, Grinnell.

Regarding the recent Nov. 5 article, "Cheney Says Exempt CIA From Suspect Torture Ban": The truly interesting, below-the-surface part of this article is not that Vice President Cheney wants to continue ignoring the Geneva Convention rules on the treatment of prisoners of war. That is to be expected from this crowd.

The interesting part is that someone "leaked" what Cheney said at a weekly private meeting of Republican senators.

This has been the most secretive and behind-the-scenes administration for many years. The fact that the dike is cracking and that the veil of secrecy and the "house of cards" is coming down is the real headline.

It's due time.

—Rodger Routh, Ankeny.

attribution

a great editorial

http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051112/OPINION04/511120311/1035/OPINION

keeping him in the dark

won't work for an excuse, i'm sorry sir, but you'll need to do better than that.

A former top official in the Bush administration is suggesting that a White House memo outlining the need for hundreds of thousands of troops for the Iraq invasion was kept from the president. Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as chief of staff to then-secretary of state Colin Powell during President Bush's first term, said in a November 7 speech that the National Security Council had prepared a pre-war memo recommending that hundreds of thousands of troops and other security personnel were needed. “I don't know if the president saw it,” Wilkerson told the audience of military officers and international lawyers, who had gathered at the military for a conference on on international humanitarian law. In response to a follow-up question after his speech, Wilkerson, a retired U.S. army colonel, said he believed that then-national security advisor Condoleezza Rice or her deputy, Stephen Hadley, had blocked the memo, but he acknowledged that he had no clear evidence.

--source

i am convinced

cbsnews has seen the light and is helping to dethrone the thieves of washington.

Pundit Pic of the Day

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2005/11/10.html#a5800

Caught On Kos

A proposal to end the long-standing practice of veterans groups addressing a joint session of the House and Senate Veterans' Affairs Committees is an insult to all who have fought, sacrificed and died to defend the Constitution, according to the Disabled American Veterans (DAV). And in a strongly worded letter to House Veterans' Affairs Committee Chairman Steve Buyer (R-Ind.), the DAV has urged him to continue the joint hearings as an invaluable tool in formulating public policy toward America's veterans.
Chairman Buyer recently announced that veterans service organizations will no longer have the opportunity to present testimony before a joint hearing of the House and Senate Veterans' Affairs Committees.

"The tradition of legislative presentations by veterans service organizations dates back to at least the 1950s. And the timing of this announcement---just before Veterans Day---could not have been worse," said DAV National Commander Paul W. Jackson.

--attribution

links of the day

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/11/11/MNGFMFMNV41.DTL

"You know, if I'm the president of the United States, I walk right into Union Square, I set up my little presidential podium and I say, 'Listen, citizens of San Francisco, if you vote against military recruiting, you're not going to get another nickel in federal funds,' " O'Reilly said Tuesday on his radio show as San Franciscans were approving the two measures. Perhaps, he didn't realize that he'd be speaking mostly to foreign tourists and suburbanites if he were standing in Union Square.

"Fine. You want to be your own country? Go right ahead," O'Reilly went on. "And if al Qaeda comes in here and blows you up, we're not going to do anything about it. We're going to say, look, every other place in America is off limits to you except San Francisco. You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/11/politics/11policy.html

WASHINGTON, Nov. 10 - Faced with a bleak public mood about Iraq and stung by Democratic accusations that he led the nation into war on false pretenses, President Bush is beginning a new effort to shore up his credibility and cast his critics as hypocrites.

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2005-11-10T211653Z_01_SCH076551_RTRUKOC_0_US-RELIGION-ROBERTSON.xml&archived=False

"I'd like to say to the good citizens of Dover: if there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God, you just rejected Him from your city," Robertson said on his daily television show broadcast from Virginia, "The 700 Club."

"And don't wonder why He hasn't helped you when problems begin, if they begin. I'm not saying they will, but if they do, just remember, you just voted God out of your city. And if that's the case, don't ask for His help because he might not be there," he said.

(they had rejected God by voting their school board out of office for supporting "intelligent design")

and finally, from foxnews no less:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,175184,00.html

Today, 36 percent of Americans approve and 53 percent disapprove of the job Bush is doing as president. For comparison, two weeks ago 41 percent said they approved and 51 percent disapproved, and at the beginning of his second term 50 percent approved and 40 percent disapproved (January 25-26).

lets see if i got this right

you lie to me, and convince me of that lie to be the truth. i go along with you believing you. it turns out that it wasn't the truth, and now YOU WANT ME TO SHARE THE BLAME?

HOW IN THE FUCK DOES THAT WORK? only in republiCON circles does that work. not in democractic America.

The White House went on the offensive in the debate over the Iraq war yesterday, insisting that U.S. intelligence had compiled a "very strong case" that Saddam Hussein harbored banned weapons and accusing congressional critics of hypocrisy because many of them voted for force three years ago.

--WaPo

so, the president is going to spring some new zingers this time to convince us that we didn't hear with our lying ears what we heard. this i gotta watch. get the popcorn out girls, tis a party waitin to happen.

see how the NYT fibs?

The NYT says that in Jordan, "the nation grew defiant Thursday." Along with other papers, the Times describes protesters in the streets of Amman vowing to stand by their government and the fight against terrorism. And exactly how many people were engaged in this mass show of defiance? "About 300 residents."

from today's papers.

Letter Of The Day

The government is looking to save money for hurricane relief, among other things. Apparently it has settled on upping charges on student loans along with other fees.

If a Democrat were president with a Democratic Congress, this would be called a tax increase for out-of-control government spending. But since both are Republican-controlled, it is called "fiscal responsibility."

-Eric McLuen, Des Moines.
attribution

judy miller's crybaby fareway letter to the editor

is up on the times' site.

another lie another dollar

The Marines said that, according to a witness, rebels broke into a family's home, killed two of the occupants and locked the rest in a room. The insurgents then used the house as a base to launch attacks on American and Iraqi troops, the Marines said. Unaware that civilians were in the house, Marine aircraft bombed it on Monday, reducing it to rubble.

...

"It is unknown why insurgents used this particular house, which was occupied, when there were so many homes in the area that were abandoned," Capt. Jeffrey S. Pool, a spokesman for the Second Marine Division, said in a statement.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/10/international/10iraq.html?pagewanted=all

gee, do you REALLY believe that line?