Rant of the Day

Sometimes I think the entire Republican party either is or has been on long term Prozac therapy, and those who are now starting to finally wake up have either stopped taking the drug or have developed a tolerance. They "had trouble pinning their current discontent on any one thing?!" Come on! Fraudulent elections didn't bother them? The Constitution stripped of its original intent, and they don't find that disturbing? Hey, Bushies! Ever hear of separation of church and state? The blurring of that boundary doesn't bother you? How about this illegal, preemptive war? Any problems with that one? And you didn't think disaster preparedness should presuppose having qualified managers in important posts in the event of an emergency? It doesn't concern you that this administration has allowed wealthy industrialists to determine the course of environmental policy? It's okay that the government commits treason, during wartime no less, by exposing the identity of one of its own covert operatives? You don't note a certain inconsistency in our engaging in a "war on terror" while condoning torture ourselves? And last but certainly not least, the administration that pledged to bring respectability back into the White House is so scandal-ridden that it makes Bill and Monica look like just another episode of "All My Children," and this seems normal to you?
--source

this was in a thread about the nytimes article where some bushies were showing signs of discontent for their fuhrer.

everybody's denying it

In Germany, prosecutors are investigating both the alleged kidnapping by the CIA of one of its citizens and a number of suspicious flights into German air bases. Sweden and Norway launched investigations after similar incidents. The Dutch accused Washington of hiding its alleged use of secret prisons in Europe, and the 46-member Council of Europe told Romania to investigate reports that it was the site of such illegal detentions.

Investigations into alleged CIA landings or flyovers are underway in Austria, Denmark, Iceland, Norway and Sweden.

source

Cartoon Of The Day

http://www.guardian.co.uk/cartoons/stevebell/0,7371,1650498,00.html

incompetence defined (again)

The SBA has only processed half the number of loans it did in a similar period after last year's Florida hurricanes, despite having hired more staff. USAT has previously suggested the culprit was a glitchly computer "upgrade." Another potential factor not explored by USAT: The head of the SBA is a former GOP fund-raiser who appears to have little relevant experience and previously headed up the SBA's bumbling response to 9/11.

the numbers

and they're just beautiful! from the online journal

A majority of U.S. adults believe the Bush administration generally misleads the public on current issues, while fewer than a third of Americans believe the information provided by the administration is generally accurate, the latest Harris Interactive poll finds.

While the telephone survey of 1,011 U.S. adults indicates about 64% of Americans believe the Bush administration "generally misleads the American public on current issues to achieve its own ends," opinion on the topic is clearly divided along party lines. A large majority (68% to 28%) of Republicans say the Bush administration generally provides accurate information. However, even larger majorities of Democrats (91% to 7%) and Independents (73% to 25%) think the information is generally misleading.

When asked about former Vice Presidential Chief of Staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who has been indicted on charges of perjury, obstruction of justice and making false statements, more than half of U.S. adults say the situation indicates "a larger problem in the Bush administration," while 35% say it was an "isolated incident." About 82% of Democrats say it indicates a larger problem, while 70% of Republicans feel the Libby case is an isolated incident.

The latest poll also finds U.S. adults are divided on the direction they feel Mr. Bush is trying to move the Supreme Court. About 42% of those surveyed think Mr. Bush is trying to make the high court too conservative, while 44% think he is trying to make it neither too conservative nor too liberal. Only 9% believe Mr. Bush is trying to make the Supreme Court too liberal, according to the poll.

the true reason we invaded iraq

Up to $US194 billion ($263 billion) in Iraqi oil revenues are going to multinational oil companies under long-term contracts, and not to the Iraqi people, a social and environmental group said.

--source

this thanksgiving day

i give thanks that there are young people out there able to win Letter Of The Day.

Congressmen are debating whether they can really give tax breaks to the wealthy while cutting money from programs for the poor.

One legislator actually said Congress had to cut funds for the poor because that's where all the money is.

The other reasoning offered to justify cuts was that the programs were not as effective as they should be. I was just wondering how giving a struggling program even less money solves the very real problem that this person brings to society's attention?

It is not as if the money taken away is assisting the poor in another, more effective way. It's used to balance the tax breaks in the budget.

— Erin O'Hern, Johnston

attribution

i'd call it CHECKMATE

for bush to continue to say that congress saw everything he saw, is astounding in the fact that amongst the other lies he has made, this one screams for impeachment.

Ten days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush was told in a highly classified briefing that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda, according to government records and current and former officials with firsthand knowledge of the matter.

The information was provided to Bush on September 21, 2001 during the "President's Daily Brief," a 30- to 45-minute early-morning national security briefing. Information for PDBs has routinely been derived from electronic intercepts, human agents, and reports from foreign intelligence services, as well as more mundane sources such as news reports and public statements by foreign leaders.

and there's more

if that's the mark of an accomplishment....

God help us for one that is a failure.

DHS Today will highlight FY05 Accomplishments in this column over the next several weeks. This week's focus is on the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The top FY05 FEMA accomplishments included:

Hurricane Katrina: The response to Hurricane Katrina was FEMA's largest response in its history

--source

today's MUST READ

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/22/AR2005112201692.html

the cheney "X"

seems there's something that happened on cnn's larry king live, where there was an "X" that appeared over cheney's face for 1/15th of a second. c'mon, that's 2 frames.

they got the 2 frames, and it was a glitch. but the right-wingnuts are out for blood. and as someone on DU (thread HERE) posted:

This is the game the wingnuts play. Make a controversy where none exists or find a red herring in one that does and create such distortion and confusion that the main issue is long lost in the noise created by the uproar.

NO SHIT!
cheney deserves to be "X"d out of the video my pretty eyes see.

my first response was

is he NUTS? but then, i knew the answer, and it was affirmative.

US President George W. Bush planned to bomb pan-Arab television broadcaster al-Jazeera, British newspaper the Daily Mirror said today, citing a Downing Street memo marked "Top Secret".
--source

the news is travelling around rather quickly

SCOTSMAN: Blair 'convinced Bush' not to launch strike at Al-Jazeera

MIRROR: Bush Plot to Bomb his Arab Ally

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
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PM G5 2.5GHZ DUAL CORE QUAD 512/250/660
Quantity: 1
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Item #00699911
Manufacturer Part No.
*HTC* 2GB RAM KIT/INSTALL PM QUAD
Quantity: 1
Price: $278.99
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Item #00570667
Manufacturer Part No.
WIRELESS KEYBOARD/MOUSE/HUB SPECIAL
Quantity: 1
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Item #00609175
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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.