this is just sad.

Thousands of veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan are facing a new nightmare -- the risk of homelessness. The government estimates that several hundred vets who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan are homeless on any given night around the country, although the exact number is unknown.

--source

count me in

Americans have a third fewer close friends and confidants than just two decades ago — a sign that people may be living lonelier, more isolated lives than in the past.

--full story

Letter Of The Day

If Congressman Steve King thinks it safer to live in Iraq than Washington, D.C., King and his wife should move to Baghdad and live outside the Green Zone.

And if King is correct, we should bring all the troops home to make Washington, D.C., safer for people.
— Dan Malloy, Des Moines.

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why i hate big corp

In fact, a CEO earned more in one workday than an average worker earned in 52 weeks, said the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. The typical worker's compensation averaged just under $42,000 for the year, while the average CEO brought home almost $11 million, EPI said.
...
For example, the chief executives of 11 of the largest companies were awarded a total of $865 million in pay in the last two years, even as they presided over a total loss of $640 billion in shareholder value, a recent study from governance firm the Corporate Library, found.

--story

from the GOOD NEWS dept.

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Episcopal clergy and lay delegates Tuesday rejected a demand from fellow Anglicans that they temporarily stop electing gay bishops, leaving little chance the proposal could be revived at a national church meeting.

--story

saddam would be proud

Reporters Without Borders voiced dismay today at recent government initiatives aimed at imposing censorship and self-censorship about the security situation and the presence of foreign troops. News media editors and executives were summoned by intelligence officials and given instructions. Then a list of banned subjects was sent out to editors."

--story

two steps forward, one step back

WASHINGTON (AP) — A Pentagon document classifies homosexuality as a mental disorder, decades after mental health experts abandoned that position.

--story

why does science scare republicans so much? what are they afraid of? they're more sissie than the sissies they're beating up on.

two steps forward, one step back

WASHINGTON (AP) — A Pentagon document classifies homosexuality as a mental disorder, decades after mental health experts abandoned that position.

--story

why does science scare republicans so much? what are they afraid of? they're more sissie than the sissies they're beating up on.

read for yourself

a cable from the baghdad ambassador to washington:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/opinions/graphics/iraqdocs_061606.pdf

sooo, things AREN'T all honkey doory.

they're ALL crooked

The Journal has a campaign contribution analysis showing corporations hedging their bets in the last year and cranking up their donations to Democrats.

via slate's today's papers

watching mcbride

and i can't help but remember my time in san francisco. that magical city of nighttime lust. where the leather-crowd intermingles with the suit-crowd and pounds of semen is wasted nightly. mcbride reminds me of my friend who took me under his umbrella of wealth and we workd on several projects together. there was always this 'if we fuck, we'll never be friends' air about us, someething similar to mcbride and his sidekick. i don't even know if mcbride is filmed in san francisco or even whether the story is set in san francisco. but it could, and probably should. but mcbride is a decent crime-drama show. i give it an 8.

Quote of the Day

"By the time you add up the extreme cost of human lives,the cost of the "toys" of war,the maiming of troops,the total disruption of families on every side of the war,the destruction of land and livelyhoods,the cost which has to be taken out of the pockets of those not even born yet...how can they preach about "winning"? Only those with no sacrifice,those with ample stock in the companies who deal with war products and those who seem to thrive on all those ribbons,badges and flags seem to gain from any confligration."
--send in the clowns

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when do they call it corruption?

The law forbids government officials from lobbying their former department or agency for a year after their departure. Homeland Security officials have shrunk that timeline by a variety of methods, many not unique to that department. But the piece identifies one key rule change, "created in late 2004 at the request of senior department officials, when the first big wave of departures began." The department was divided into seven components for purposes of the lobbying laws, so now a former official can lobby DHS officials right away, as long as the lobbyees are from one of the six components the official did not work for before.

ah HAH.... the 2004 WAS stolen!

By late afternoon on November 2, 2004, nationally, all the exit polls showed John Kerry winning with 50.8% of the votes and showed George W Bush with 48.2%, meaning Kerry had a 2.6% lead over Bush. But when the vote counts came in at the end of election day, Bush had 50.9% of the votes, and Kerry had 48.1%, meaning Bush received 2.8% more votes than Kerry.

Ohio was the most important state to Bush. He could not win without it. He spent so much time in the state that people began to wonder whether he had left a forwarding address to Ohio. At his last campaign rally in the state, a mere 4 days before the election, Bush bestowed special praise on a husband and wife team who in hindsight, were more helpful to Bush than any other politicians in Ohio, as far as rigging the election....

--source

isn't that how concentraation camps were created?

A federal judge in Brooklyn ruled yesterday that the government has wide latitude under immigration law to detain noncitizens on the basis of religion, race or national origin, and to hold them indefinitely without explanation.

--story

they're going to get what they want no matter what

from TPM:

Remember John Pondexter's Total Information Awareness (TIA) program? The ill-conceived datamining effort is back, and worse than ever -- they've stripped privacy protections and abuse safeguards from the system, and opened it up to users from all over the intelligence community, according to a new report from National Journal.

how many people do you know

who can tell which season a particular versionof the song for gunsmoke was written for. i can tell you beginning, middle or latter part of it's life on tv. tvland plays gunsmoke daily, and recently they've dug up some episidoes i haven't seen before which is crazy since i watch gunsmoke every day, and on weekends all day sundays. to catch an episode i haven't seen already is a rarity.

my email to mediacom

I thought it was about time I sounded off to you folks at mediacom. My last three bills saw increases, for one thing or another, expiration of past offers, and likewise, and it has come time for me to ask you: why do you hate us so much? We are your loyal customers who have stuck with you for years when we could have chosen other, much cheaper services that have become available. I could choose 8mb/sec downloads from dsl, yet I remained with your pithy 3mb - in real life it's only 1.5mb.

Well, it's time to tell you, either cut me some slack or I'll take my business elsewhere. Enough is enough.

Letter Of The Day

The widows of our soldiers in Iraq should be just as eligible for millions of dollars as the widows of 9/11.
— Bob Martin, Ankeny.

attribution

the reaction of the commander in chief?

"it's a number"

"It's a number." That's the reaction from White House press secretary Tony Snow to word that 2,500 American soldiers have died since the Iraq war began.

--story

bush now has the blood of 2500 people on his hands

Washington, D.C. (AHN) - U.S. military deaths in Iraq have now topped 2500, three years after the U.S.-led forces invaded the country and removed President Saddam Hussein the Pentagon announced Thursday.

--story and where is cnn?

Confidential Messaging Memo – Floor Debate on Iraq and the Global War on Terror

read the memo HERE.

it's interesting to see the comments made:

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/06/14/boehner-memo

Editorial of the WeeQ

Detainees in Despair

I WAS released from the United States military's prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in July 2004. As I was about to board a plane that would take me home to France, the last detainee I saw was a young Yemeni. He was overwhelmed by emotion.

--full story

Letter of the WeeQ

If the Republican Party and the Christian right do not loudly and repeatedly reject the venomous hatred and bigotry dripping from the fangs of Ann Coulter, they can be neither Christian nor right.
— William C. Green, Fort Madison.

attribution

bwahahaha

Letter Of The Day

Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said the last week of May that Iran does not pose an immediate nuclear threat. He cautioned that the world shouldn’t jump the gun with erroneous information, as he said the U.S.-led coalition did in Iraq in 2003. Nor should it push the country into retaliation as international sanctions did in North Korea.

The Bush administration will not be deterred by these facts. It is hellbent on pressing for U.N. sanctions for what Iran has not done — making enemies instead of friends is its strong point. This delusional administration is out of control.
— Frank P. Belcastro, Dubuque.

attribution

this is how warped our government has become

when emails to leaders of agencies refer to the president as 'the leader'

http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2006/images/06/09/email.pdf

Letter Of The Day

If a group of thugs targets Hispanics, African-Americans, gays, Jews or any other minority group, then their crime is considered especially egregious because its primary motivation is hate. It is a hate crime.

So what does that tell us about our president and the thugs in Congress who are pushing for a constitutional amendment to define marriage as a union only between a man and a woman?

The sole motivation is to deny gay Americans the same rights and privileges as held by heterosexual Americans.
— William C. Green, Fort Madison.

attribution

editorial of the day

over at the new york times:

The Million-Dollar House on the Hill

--story

more administration lies

Although U.S. officials had said Zarqawi was dead by the time they arrived on the scene, new information revealed otherwise.

and

A U.S. general also told reporters that besides Zarqawi, two men and three women were killed in the blast. Contrary to earlier reports, a child was not killed.

what this means is that you can NEVER believe someone who lies every time they open their mouths.

when do they call it corruption?

seems another GOPr got busted and, i hope, gets nailed to the wall.

The LAT fronts new troubles for Republican Rep. Jerry Lewis, who's chair of the über-powerful appropriations committee. The feds are investigating Lewis, and now we learn that a defense-contractor-funded PAC sent plenty of checks to Lewis' stepdaughter. The contractor, of course, was later earmarked for contracts via Lewis' committee. NBC just interviewed another defense contractor who said Lewis once tried to shake him down.

more reason to celebrate

A victory for same sex couples today as the United States Senate rejects President Bush's proposed constitutional marriage amendment. The vote was 49 to 48, but far from the amount needed to move.
--source

well, what would you think would come from known liars?

The Post explains that the nuclear deal endorsed by the White House "leaves open the possibility" that Tehran can enrich uranium in-country. The administration said it will take years, at least, before it would greenlight that. Still, the offer, as the WP puts it, "differs significantly from the Bush administration's stated determination to prevent Iran from mastering" nukes technology.

the 18th state, 32 left to go

Bigot-for-pay Tim Eyman's efforts to hold a referendum on the hard-won civil rights law passed this last March have failed. This evening, Eyman announced at a press conference that Referendum 65 had collected only 105,103 signatures, 7,337 short of the 112,440 valid signatures needed to keep the bill from taking effect tomorrow and putting it instead on the November ballot. Washington now becomes the 18th state in the US with state-wide protections for gay civil rights.

--source

RIP Billy Preston

PHOENIX - Billy Preston, the exuberant keyboardist who landed dream gigs with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and enjoyed his own series of hit singles, including "Outta Space" and "Nothing From Nothing," died Tuesday at 59.
--story

Quote of the Day

"Video didn't kill the radio star. They got together and threw a party."
--someone at audioblog.com

attribution

Letter Of The Day

Our governor is naive (“Vilsack Offers Political Views to Graduates,” May 23).

On his trip to Israel he stands only a few miles from one-quarter million malnourished children in Palestine and peddles the platitude that “hunger and illiteracy” breed “terrorists.”

He seems not to realize that the blockade of food and water resources to defenseless civilians by the Israeli government is a war crime and a severe violation of the Geneva Conventions. The theft of $50 million in Palestinian tax receipts is a crime. The colonization of land and the confiscation of private property is a violation of Article 49 of the Geneva Conventions.

These crimes committed in our names and with our money are financed by the same group that paid the governor’s air fare. The governor owes Iowans a complete disclosure of all financial transactions related to this trip.
— John Hauptman, Ames.

attribution

saddam would be proud

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon has decided to omit from new detainee policies a key tenet of the Geneva Convention that explicitly bans "humiliating and degrading treatment," according to knowledgeable military officials, a step that would mark a further, potentially permanent, shift away from strict adherence to international human rights standards.
--source

2004 was stolen so says RFK, Jr.

Republicans prevented more than 350,000 voters in Ohio from casting ballots or having their votes counted -- enough to have put John Kerry in the White House.

BY ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.

from the rolling stone

from the "yeaaaah right" files

In a surprise to no one, President Bush called for an amendment banning same-sex marriage in his weekly radio address. The president's advisers said Bush was picking up the issue now because of several recent judicial challenges to state bans and because the Senate is set to debate the issue this week. Electoral politics had nothing to do with it.

take a guess on when iran gets hit?

it's too late for 06/06/06, but i'll bet it'll be in june sometime.

first, haditha, then ishaqi

WASHINGTON, June 2 (Reuters) - A U.S. military probe has exonerated U.S. troops in the deaths of Iraqi civilians in the town of Ishaqi in March, finding American forces followed standard procedures and committed no misconduct, defense officials said on Friday.
...
Police in Ishaqi, 60 miles (100 km) north of Baghdad, have said six adults and five children were shot dead in a U.S. military raid on a home on March 15.

The U.S. military maintains there were four dead in the incident, including a guerrilla, two women and a child, and said they died after troops were fired upon from the house as they arrived to arrest an al Qaeda suspect.

The defense officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said an investigation found no wrongdoing by U.S. forces.

--source

more on ishaqi here

anybody who disagrees that our troops are causing bad feelings

of the iraqis only needs to hear this:

The U.S.'s top commander in Iraq has ordered all troops to do "core warrior values" training, which USAT says will include handy "slides that depict professional military values and the importance of disciplined conduct in combat."

the above steps are being taken because of what happened in haditha. what happened in balad is another story being untold in any corner other than the BBC:

The BBC is airing video that seems to support Iraqi charges, and contradict the Pentagon's account, of a different incident in which 11 Iraqis were killed by GIs near Balad. Knight Ridder had an in-depth report on the charges in March—and nobody much noticed, including TP.

anybody who disagrees that our troops are causing bad feelings

of the iraqis only needs to hear this:

The U.S.'s top commander in Iraq has ordered all troops to do "core warrior values" training, which USAT says will include handy "slides that depict professional military values and the importance of disciplined conduct in combat."

the above steps are being taken because of what happened in haditha. what happened in balad is another story being untold in any corner other than the BBC:

The BBC is airing video that seems to support Iraqi charges, and contradict the Pentagon's account, of a different incident in which 11 Iraqis were killed by GIs near Balad. Knight Ridder had an in-depth report on the charges in March—and nobody much noticed, including TP.

FARPOINT.FACTOID

when did a coup d'etat happen in America?

in 1898, in wilmington, NC. the only one recorded in American history.

attribution

American sentiment

the anti-bush sentiment is growing exponentially because when someone turns on the very people who laid out their trust for them and only to get shit upon, then that really makes it hurt more, hurt more = more upset = more anti-bush sentiment. actually, since there's a totally republican government, there's really not a whole lotta other people to take the heat off. no, they wanted the whole pie, let'em get sick eating it to the last crumb.

Testing photo message

Testing photo message,
originally uploaded by leQ.

Headline of the Day

Gay boycott could hurt Cox in primary

my resume from 1986

actually, i found two ... aren't YOU lucky.

HERE
and HERE

FARPOINT.FACTOID

THE NUMBER OF DEATHS ASSOCIATED WITH KATRINA: 1577

Letter Of The Day

it's been a while, but here's today's winner:

One recent evening I stood outside the Village Inn in Ankeny as people parked and got out of their cars and came out of the restaurant to view a full rainbow in the eastern sky — from horizon to horizon it spread its beauty. I hadn’t seen a rainbow like that for more than 15 years; it is a memorable experience, a community experience, a human experience that thrills me every time it happens.

As I looked around, I saw that no one was checking for citizenship papers; we were standing talking excitedly stranger to stranger, stranger to friend and friend to friend about this natural phenomenon we were experiencing.

We were men and women, people of color and Caucasians; we were challenged physically, emotionally and mentally and we were not; Republican and Democrat and folks who didn’t vote the two-party system. We were gay and straight, rich and poor, child and adult, tall and short, those who had broken laws and spent time in prison and those who had not, Protestant, Jew and Muslim. We did not all weigh the same. We had not all read “The DaVinci Code.” We spoke English, and we did not. We were American citizens and we were not.

There were no armed personnel telling us who could and who could not enjoy the rainbow; it was life at its finest in an American community.

I am begging this nation to begin responding from the heart with love and compassion, not fear and hatred, when it comes to any so-called problem we make up to divide ourselves. This pledge of allegiance was first used at the dedication of the World’s Fair grounds in Chicago on Oct. 21, 1892, the 400th anniversary of the discovery of America: “I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands: one Nation indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all.”

That is the America I want to be a part of today. I want all violent responses to human conflicts to stop today, right now, so there will still be an America in another 400 years.

— Patricia Moore, Ankeny.

attribution