corrente

Meaning no disrespect to our house songwriter MJS, this one from a bard named Sara needs wider distribution. Make up yer own tune, and for bonus points figure out all the poets subtly cited here:

(via a comment thread over at Atrios although I misplaced the link to the precise one.)

The Bush stood on the burning deck,
And said, "Can't take the heat!
I must get out of the kitchen now,
And cool my blistered feet."

When Bush went down beside the sea,
To cool his feet in the brine;
He met the Ancient Mariner,
At the helm of a Swift boat fine.

"I've just returned from the DNC,
The DNC and the sky,
And all I ask," cried John Kerree,
"Is the White House, by and by."

"I've hugged the shore for many a day
With my grumbling, cranky crew,
But now I'm in your waterway,
And I'm gunning, Shrub, for you."

"Your vessel's the Narcissus,
Your crew are falling sick,
You've an Albatross around your neck,
That smells like Big Time Dick."

"You're sailing three sheets in the wind
Straight into a stormy gale;
Your deck’s on fire, your hopes are pinned
On catching the Great White Whale."

"The Hesperus and the Mary Deare
And the Deutschland all were sunk;
And even they had captains, hear--
Who weren't dry stinking drunk."

Said Bush, "Your speech is clever
But you don't understand:
The One who made me Skipper,
Is Lord of sea and land."

"I do not have to read the News,
Or USA Today;
I never base my plans or views
On what dumb pollsters say,"

"I listen to my Heavenly Dad,
I love to hear him talk,
And if he tells me to, I'll steer
Straight into the Inchcape Rock!"

"Twilight and evening bell,
And after that....(smirk, smirk)
I'm Captain here, so go to Hell!"
And he gave the wheel a jerk.

It was Ashcroft, Ashcroft everywhere,
And no sign of the Bill of Rights,
Or Osama bin L. or an end to hell,
And no WMDs in sight.

And then a wave of pure disgust
Rose up with a mighty swell,
It swamped Shrub’s decks, the timbers heaved,
And the public heaved, as well.

They threw God's Skipper in the drink
And his Albatross in after,
And when their grisly crew was gone,
Twas time for joy and laughter.

Our Ship of State is leaking tub,
I pray we may not founder,
At least our captain is not Shrub,
And will make our vessel sounder.

This briny yarn I spin is true,
I saw it with these eyes,
So buy me a round, you cheapskate you,
And I'll tell you a bunch of lies.

aWol Payroll Records Jedi Master Paul Lukasiak—the kind of guy who figures out what the holes in the punchcards mean in the AF's 60s-style payroll system—has revised his site, and the introduction is, um, rather pointed. In fact, it's napalm for Sunday morning:

On February 10. 2004, the White House released a number of documents related to George W. Bush’s military service in the Texas Air National Guard. (TXANG). The White House claimed repeatedly (twelve time in fact, see box) that these documents proved that Bush had fulfilled his duty.

On Friday, February 13, 2004, the White House released what it described as all the documents in Bush’s personnel files. Most accurately described as a “document dump” the hundreds of pages were thoroughly disorganized and filled with scores of duplicate pages.

The mainstream press was confronted with this massive amount of information to sift through, and had no expertise with which to evaluate the information contained in the documents. As a result, virtually no real reporting was done on the documents, other than to state that there was “no smoking gun” found, apparently because none of the documents announced in bold type “BUSH WAS AWOL”.

But the records released by the White House contained more than a “smoking gun”. They contained a whole arsenal of documents that, if you know the context in which they were written, establish beyond a shadow of a doubt that “Bush was AWOL.”
(via The aWol Project)

Go read the whole thing. The devil, as always, is in the details. The Bush "document dump" strategy assumes that nobody will read the documents. Of course, the wussy SCLM didn't, but now we have the blogosphere, and Paul Lukasiak did.

And the story is building up a head of steam. The Blue Lemur talked to Reagan administration DOD official Lawrence Korb, and got this response:

Lawrence J. Korb, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manpower, Reserve Affairs, Installations and Logistics under Ronald Reagan from 1981-1985, confirmed [the] legal analysis of President Bush’s Guard Service in a telephone call Friday afternoon.

Given proof that Bush missed five months of Guard training sessions, he said that Bush would be considered AWOL.

“If you don’t show up, you’re absent without leave, by definition,” Korb said.

No more than ten percent of sessions could be missed without them being made up, he asserted. He added that President Bush should have been mandated to serve active duty if he missed even two months of service in a fiscal year – 24 months of active duty minus the amount of active duty already served.

“You would be put on active duty and sent wherever they needed you,” he said.

At the time Bush was serving in the Texas Air National Guard, Korb himself was serving in the Naval Reserve, the Navy’s equivalent of the National Guard, where he served from 1966 to 1985. He dismisses suggestions that the Guard was being lenient about service at the time.

“At that time they were very strict about fulfilling their obligations – and we don’t like to say it – because this was a way to avoid the draft and going to Vietnam."‘

He was unable to examine Bush’s payroll records at his home on Friday, but is expected to formally confirm that Bush had failed to complete his required duty in 1972, therefore rendering him AWOL, at his office Monday.

Korb currently serves as a Senior Analyst at the Center for Defense Information and a Senior Fellow at the progressive thinktank, the Center for American Progress.
(via The Blue Lemur)

(It shows how extreme the Bush agenda is, and how far the 6 winger billionaire families who control the VRWC (back) have pushed America to the right, that a Reaganite would serve at a liberal think thank.)

And just think! The AP suit to release all the records is still to come. Maybe that microfilm will tell us where the missing DD25[8|6] is. And we know Bush was grounded—pissing away the million bucks or so we paid to train him—for failure to take a medical exam, right after the Air Force initiated mandatory drug training; maybe the AP files will help there as well.

Bottom line, though: Fortunate son Bush was aWol. We have the evidence. All that remains is to make the story mainstream.

It really does come down to a question of character, doesn't it? Surely the nation is entitled to ask whether its "wartime President" was absent without leave while others went to their deaths?

Developing... (Heh)

UPDATE Froomkin (include your name and hometown) might be one person who would like to break this story in the mainstream.

...of the American Civil Liberties Union that is?

If so, good for you. Send 'em another double eagle and an "attaboy!" If not, read below. They just threw half a million smackers in Johnny Asscrack's fat fucking face rather than bow down before his current "enemies list."

(via ABCnewswire)

The ACLU withdrew Saturday from a program that allows federal workers and military personnel to contribute to charities because it requires participating nonprofit groups to check their employees' names against a government watch list of suspected terrorists.

The American Civil Liberties Union called the Combined Federal Campaign's policy unconstitutional and said it would reject more than $500,000 in donations from the program rather than submit to the requirement, which was instituted under the Patriot Act, said Anthony Romero, the ACLU's executive director.

Romero withdrew the ACLU from the program and said the organization plans to sue the government over the policy. The group says the watch list is filled with errors that people listed on them have no way of correcting.

"The Patriot Act and the government war on terror now threatens America's nonprofit organizations," Romero said. "We believe the new requirement violates our fundamental principles as well as the constitutional rights of our employees."

Mara Patermaster, the director of the charity program, told The New York Times in Saturday's editions that charities and nonprofit organizations that did not check their employees' names against the federal terrorist watch list could be permanently excluded from the program.

"We expect that the charities will take affirmative action to make sure they are not supporting terrorist activities," she said. "That would specifically include inspecting the lists."

"Our biggest concern is that these government watch lists are notoriously riddled with errors," Romero said. "And they allow no recourse for individuals on the list to correct those errors."

The ACLU was projected to raise about $500,000 from the program, Romero said.

They currently ask for $20 and have a good secure website to join on. If you don't want your name on a "watch list" for the remaining three months of the BushCoInc administration, send 'em a money order with no return address and pick up your card after the Rapture comes in January.

George W. Bush, on a recent campain stop in Ohio, introduces VP Dick Cheney to the cheering enthusiastic assembly. Earlier Mr. Bush had entertained the gathering with a short folksy story of how he and Mr. Cheney had come to know each other as well as offering an optimistic reminder of the power and value of wishful thinking.

"I was riding my bike around the ranch in Crawford one afternoon and came across a Saudi Genie in a bottle and he granted me three wishes," says Mr. Bush. "My first wish was to be bathed in a vast sea of energy blessings and showered with gifts of entrepreneurial good cheer." (snickers) (audience laughter - whooping and applause) "Next I wished to be rewarded with the presidency of the USA and Dear Leadership of the whole wide world!" (applause) "And, for my third wish, I wished for a big time 12 inch prick ..... and the slippery son-of-a-bitch has been with me ever since!" (laughter) (applause) (whooping and grunting)

Mr. Bush, shouting above the now whooping and grunting crowd, declared of Mr. Cheney: "hes strong, he's steady, and he gets the job done!"

Mr. Cheney, aroused by the throbbing vibrating audience, suddenly appeared in Mr. Bush's right hand, mumble grumbled something to the effect that massaging his shiny bald head would go a long way to making fabulous dreams come true and then slumped over and disappeared into Mr. Bush's front pocket. The crowd erupted with orgiastic delight and began chanting "Dick Dick Dick we want Dick! He's our Leader's 12 inch prick!"

When asked if Mr. Cheney would accompany Mr. Bush on any future campaign flesh presser whistle stops in, oh, say Alabama, a spokesperson for the Bu$h camp told reporters: "Mr. Prick's, I mean Dick, I mean Cheney, Mr Cheney's!, schedule is a matter of personal consensual relationships, I mean national security, a matter of national security!, and any details concerning future arousals, I mean appearences!, will remain of an undisclosed private nature unless otherwise stimulated, I mean stated!, until otherwise stated!"

In other news: Republicans in Florida release an Absentee Flyer flyer...

*

link to this post - by the farmer :   7:42 PM | |

A South Florida woman who died this week had an unusual last request. Instead of flower or contributions in her name to a charity, she asked those who loved her to try to make sure President George W. Bush is not re-elected.

Joan Abbey, shown here before her death, wanted most of all to have President George W. Bush lose the November election.
(from WTF via Fort Lauderdale Channel 10)

The Kerry site is here.

Among the many, many reasons we need President Kerry's inauguration day to arrive quickly is to get some better judges.

(I must admit I sat on this story (um, bad phrasing there) all week so as not to have it get lost in the convention coverage. This allowed Jesus'General and his evil commentors like G. D. Frogsdong and Anntichrist Coulter to get first crack (oh dear, more phrasing problems) at analysis. Shame on them all, the naughty people!)

(via AL AP newsindex)

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) -- A federal appeals court Wednesday upheld a 1998 state law banning the sale of sex toys in Alabama, ruling the Constitution doesn't include a right to sexual privacy.

In a 2-1 decision, a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the state has a right to police the sale of devices including electronic vibrators and other products meant to stimulate the sex organs.

"If the people of Alabama in time decide that a prohibition on sex toys is misguided, or ineffective, or just plain silly, they can repeal the law and be finished with the matter," the court said. "On the other hand, if we today craft a new fundamental right by which to invalidate the law, we would be bound to give that right full force and effect in all future cases including, for example, those involving adult incest, prostitution, obscenity, and the like."

Circuit Judge Rosemary Barkett disagreed, writing that the decision was based on the "erroneous foundation" that adults don't have a right to consensual sexual intimacy and that private acts can be made a crime in the name of promoting "public morality."

"This case is not, as the majority's demeaning and dismissive analysis suggests, about sex or about sexual devices. It is about the tradition of American citizens from the inception of our democracy to value the constitutionally protected right to be left alone in the privacy of their bedrooms and personal relationships," Barkett wrote in her dissent.

So if we let the poor, lonely but moral Widow Smith buy a vibrator it means we have to allow adult incest. Ahh, Alabama, whose state motto should be "Making Tennessee Look Good Since That Scopes Trial Thing."

Big politicians love small-town newspapers, TV and radio stations. They are supposed to be the conduit to the "little people" who aren't online, don't read the New York Times or the Washington Post every day. They are also supposed to be staffed by "down home folks" who will be SO thrilled to be in the presence of the Great Ones that they ask no embarassing questions like the smartass city boys do.

They are not supposed to get uppity and question their masters, dammit!

(via Arizona Star, via Atrios)

President Bush's re-election campaign insisted on knowing the race of an Arizona Daily Star journalist assigned to photograph Vice President Dick Cheney.

The Star refused to provide the information. Cheney is scheduled to appear at a rally this afternoon at the Pima County Fairgrounds.

A rally organizer for the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign asked Teri Hayt, the Star's managing editor, to disclose the journalist's race on Friday. After Hayt refused, the organizer called back and said the journalist probably would be allowed to photograph the vice president.

Danny Diaz, a spokesman for the president's re-election campaign, said the information was needed for security purposes.

Diaz repeated that answer when asked if it is the practice of the White House to ask for racial information or if the photographer, Mamta Popat, was singled out because of her name.

Organizer Christine Walton asked for Popat's race in telephone conversations with two other Star editors before she spoke to Hayt. They also refused to provide the information. Walton told Hayt that Popat's race was necessary to allow the Secret Service to distinguish her from someone else who might have the same name.

Every time I hear a story from Tucson, Arizona I know I will spend the rest of the day with a certain song running through my head: Get back! Get back! Get back to where you once belonged....

Most of us lefty types have been scrupulous about following the rule of "love the soldier, hate the war."

But ever since Kos's superb essay a few months back about mercenaries the subject of contractors has been a touchy one. Do contract workers, from American companies at least, fall into the same category as soldiers for purposes of moral evaluation? We here at corrente have concentrated mostly on following the money trails, figuring out where the loot is winding up. Or trying to track the chains of command at places like Abu Ghraib.

The individual contract workers themselves have not gotten much attention, with the exception of the Mississippi truck driver who was taken hostage. We see no faces, we hear no names, the stories and the obituaries run only in small-town papers across America.

Guess what? These folks are being screwed. We knew that already, but we didn't know just how badly.

(via WaPo)'s Renae Merle

At least 110 contractors working for U.S. firms have died in Iraq, according to industry estimates. Experts say the number of casualties could be far higher, given the tens of thousands of private contractors who have taken over duties for the military. The Pentagon does not keep an official count, and many companies do not announce when their employees in Iraq are killed.

Contractors are paid more than soldiers are, but their life insurance policies are usually not as generous or as ironclad. A dead soldier's family is guaranteed life insurance and death benefits.

And although the military generally transports soldiers' and contractors' bodies together from Iraq to Kuwait, they are treated differently upon arrival. The military aims to fly soldiers' bodies to Dover Port Mortuary in Delaware within three days of their arrival at the Kuwait processing center. Contractors generally have to find a commercial flight to ship the bodies, and that can take time.

This story is grim in the extreme, which is probably why it's being buried in a Saturday edition.

No, not Mary Kate and Ashley. Eew! The Bush twins, Babs II and Jenna (back, but not at lunchtime).

Froomkin, in a rare lapse, points us to Their new "blog" (heh) but neglects to tell us that there's no "there" there:

Sadly, the "full archives" are empty. Not that empty full-ness comes as any surprise from the "up is down" maladministration.

Maybe when the tWins discovered that blogging involves lots of work posting, finding a distinctive voice, and proving your worth to your readers, They decided to bail. Or get some operative to ghost for Them. Yeah, that's the ticket...

Say, I wonder if Their blog will enable comments? Maybe alert readers along Their itinerary could let them know where the bars (back) are? I mean, assuming they don't already know...

NOTE As a sign of my respect for The Chosen One, our Dear Leader, I always to capitalize His Name when referring to Him. Therefore, as a mark of similar respect, I capitalize Their names as well—since, if He has been Chosen of God to lead us, must They not be Chosen as well?

The essential Froomkin notes:

[WaPo's Allen"] "Until now, most of Bush's campaign events have been filled with his backers. His staff said that during August, he will make it a point to appear in more impromptu settings."
(via WaPo)

Well, at least citizens won't have to sign the electoral equivalent of a pre-nup (back) to get to see Bush.

On the other hand, Rove and Bush being who and what they are, I can't help but think—assuming that they're telling the truth—that they're hoping for some sort of clumsy Seattle-like demonstration to give the "Bush hating" meme new life. So if anyone breaks through the bubble, I hope they're quiet and respectful, or Billionaires for Bush, and above all telegenic for Democrats.

I don't know boxing terminology at all well, but it strikes me that Kerry has always gone for a single knockout (as with Weld, for example). This election, Bush is hiding behind his jab, and trying to bloody Kerry. But for Bush to appear in an "impromptu setting"—that would mean Bush is dropping his guard, momentarily, hoping that Kerry will.... Readers?

Although not every vote is counted....

Anyhow, Buzzflash has an image of the flyer where Republicans tell their supporters to cast their votes by absentee ballot (back here), because the electronic voting machines can't by trusted.




Sheesh, they're even looting our conspiracy theories! I guess we should find that flattering, in a way....

Digby has a wonderful take on why this flyer is post-modern politics at its best..

Could it be that the Florida Republicans don't care about your vote because they already have the next election wired, using their new electronic voting technology? You'd have to ask them that. Meanwbile, the tragedy of Florida 2000 is repeating itself in 2004, as farce:

Florida's patented electoral circus bounded into the realm of the surreal Friday with a messy airing of gripes and an embarrassing discovery.

Constance Kaplan, director of the largest elections office in the state, spent the day trying to explain why the 2002 election data that [Kaplan] had been telling everyone were irretrievably lost were not lost after all. In fact, the data -- audits of the troubled 2002 governor's primary and general election -- were on a computer disk in a folder among "books and bookcases and old reports" in the conference room next to her office.
(via WaPo)

You know, I have to overcome my essential sense of modesty and give myself a tip of the ol' Corrente Hat on this one. When this story first broke—when the nationwide bellylaugh began— I snarked: "Hey, maybe they'll find the votes in an "unlabelled binder" (back here, just like Bush's also mysteriously missing military records).

And lo and behold! They did! The CD with the votes was in "a folder with the old reports"... (I mean, assuming it wasn't put there as a throw down (back) by the electronic voting machine vendor, who was in the room when the CD was "found." In that case, what's snarking for me is a cover story for the Republicans, which is frightening on so many levels.)

Thank you, Republicans! You not only meet my expecations, you exceed them! Every time!

Thank you, Republicans! I'm so proud that I don't even need to cast my vote any more!

Atrios has very nice poll numbers.

Sweet dreams!

And of course, the figures are as awful as we expected

This year's federal deficit will soar to a record $445 billion, the White House projected Friday in a report provoking immediate election-season tussling over how well President Bush has handled the economy.

Administration officials hailed the budget figures as a solid improvement over the deficits analysts forecast early this year, and said they were on their way to their goal of halving this year's shortfall in five years.
(via AP)

If you believe, clap your hands!

Hey, at least its nice to know that the Republicans have finally abandoned Keynesianism. I mean, it used to be that with a record deficit you could at least buy some stimulus for the economy, but the economy's tanking too!

Steady leadership right down the tubes....

Why can't we outsource the economists, anyhow? They've been wrong on the job market from day 1 of the Wecovery, and now they're wrong on growth.

The U.S. economy slowed dramatically in the spring to an annual growth rate of 3 percent, as consumers, worried about higher gasoline prices, cut back their spending to the weakest pace in three years, the Commerce Department reported Friday.

The April-June advance in the gross domestic product, the country's output of goods and services, was below the 3.8 percent increase many economists had expected and was significantly down from a revised 4.5 percent growth rate in the first three months of the year.

The administration, counting on a rebounding economy to bolster President Bush's re-election prospects, insisted the second-quarter slowdown was only temporary and forecast that growth would rebound in the second half of the year.
(via AP)

If you believe, clap your hands!

What a coincidence! OSHA actually does something, and it just happens to be in Ohio%mdash;a swing state!

TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) - Federal investigators Friday announced $280,000 in fines against the builder of a bridge where four workers were killed when a 1,000-ton crane collapsed.

U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration officials said at a news conference that St. Louis-based Fru-Con Construction Corp. did not follow instructions for safely operating the crane and violated three othPr federal workplace safety standards.
(via AP)

Do the math: that's $70,000 a life. Sounds like just a cost of doing business to me.

So I think we can have The Department of "How Stupid Do They Think We Are?" handle this one.

Really, if Bush wants to pander to swing state voters, he's going to have to do a lot better than that.

Atrios and Marshall are unwarrantedly respectful of the carping about Kerry "stepping on his applause lines" during his acceptance speech, holding out the possibility that the same morons who are wrong about everything else might be right for once. Nonsense. All we have to do is dial back the time machine to 2000. Here's Charlie Cook, one of the few intelligent commentators on the political scene, about reaction to Gore' speech:

Interestingly, many people who were in the Staples Center were not impressed with Gore's speech. They complained that he talked too fast, stepped on his applause lines, and plowed through the cheers of the crowd as if he couldn't hear them or was afraid to stop. As it turned out, the faster speaking style prevented Gore from sounding pedantic and condescending-problems he's yet to fully overcome. ... Breaking through the applause lines, as it turned out, made the speech sound more natural to television viewers, who were not focused on crowd reaction in the hall.

In short, Gore left a strong and positive impression with TV viewers, and he was rewarded with a big poll bounce that carried into September.

Personally I think plowing into applause is effective in an acceptance speech, because the whole point is establish momentum for the months ahead. It's like James Brown playing 'on the one'-- a tension is set up between two opposing forces that is electric and propulsive. Stopping every time your audience applauds, by contrast, merely dissipates the energy.

In any event, to paraphrase Mencken, no one ever went broke underestimating the imbecility of the chattering classes.

Remember the Amazing Disappearing, Absolutely Positively Gone, Destroyed In Fact and Here's the Details Bush military records? Which less than a week later made a miraculous reappearance to tell us...well, absolutely nothing to speak of, except to cast further doubt, as if it were necessary, on BushCo's credibility?

You're just not gonna believe it, but something very similar has happened again. Remember those records of the Florida primary that were lost, gone beyond recall, guaranteed never to be seen again because of two, count 'em two, horrible computer crashes?

(via AP via NYT)

Miami-Dade County elections officials said Friday they have found detailed electronic voting records from the 2002 gubernatorial primary that were originally believed lost in computer crashes last year.

Seth Kaplan, spokesman for the Elections Supervisor office, said the records were found on a compact disc in the office. ``We are very pleased,'' he said.

When the loss was initially reported earlier this week, state officials had stressed that no votes were lost in the actual election. The record of the votes had been believed lost during the crashes in April and November of 2003, and county officials had said they did not have a backup system in place until December.

The lost records marked the latest in a series of embarrassing episodes involving Florida voting since the turmoil of the 2000 presidential race.

Despite the discovery of the disc, local activists expressed skepticism.

No shit??

``There are now more questions than before,'' said Lida Rodriguez-Taseff, chairwoman of the Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition. ``I certainly want the disc, I certainly wish someone would test the original disc they are now claiming they found and determine when that disc was made, where it came from, whether it's been tampered with and if anyone's opened it.''

A team from the state Division of Elections was sent to Miami earlier this week to work with local officials to see what happened and whether the information was retrievable. Kaplan said officials from the machine vendor, Election Systems & Software Inc., were also in the office, though he said it was Miami-Dade officials who found the disc.

Kaplan said the backup disc was likely lost due to transition in the office within the past year. A new elections supervisor took over in July 2003.

UPDATE: Minor editing done to add a line inadvertently left out of the opening graf by Your Editor hitting "publish" in too big a damn hurry to rush off to watch the "Daily Show" rerun. Hey, it was the Sharpton speech episode, just had to riff on that one again.

Now let me say first off that the "endorse Kerry" part of that headline is pure speculation on my part. But suspicion is surely justified after seeing the following:

(via Pittsburg Post-Gazette)

WASHINGTON -- Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge is considering stepping down, telling colleagues he needs to earn money in the private sector to put his teenage children through college, officials said.

Ridge, 58, has explained to colleagues that he needs to earn money to comfortably put his two children, Tommy Jr. and Lesley, through college, officials said. Both are now teenagers. Ridge earns $175,700 a year as a Cabinet secretary.

When Ridge left Pennsylvania as governor, where he served from 1995 to 2001, he was earning $138,316 each year.

Ridge owns an $873,000 home in Bethesda, Md....and his most recent financial disclosure reports, filed in early 2003, showed that he owned between $122,000 and $787,000 in stocks and funds, including modest ownership in The Walt Disney Co., General Electric, Nike, Oracle Corp. and Microsoft Corp.

My God, the poor man! Destitution indeed! A fund drive is certainly in order. I weep into my kerchief at the thought of his plight.

So did I just pull that "Kerry endorsement" stuff out of my ass? Well, yeah, since I am a mere blogger. If I worked at NYT it would be called "It's my trial balloon and I'll float it if I want to, thank you."

But think back to what seemed like a stock line in Kerry's acceptance speech last night, about helping make college more affordable for the downtrodden and hard-pressed. If even a guy making 175 freakin' thou a year needs help to send just two kids through school, is this not proof that Kerry's college aid plan is needed even more than we thought?

Or...is it maybe that Ridge wants out of the cesspool before the honey wagon arrives, and came up with the best excuse he could? We Spin, You Get Dizzy (slogan tm. 2004 correnteco.inc)

That the Emperor has no clothes we have long known. Proof that the Vice-Emperor is similarly sky-clad, and equally undesirous of having this brought to His attention, is noted below. Kudos to alert reader raison de fem who is on the scene of this developing story. Over to you, raison: (via ABQJournal)

Some would-be spectators hoping to attend Vice President Dick Cheney's rally in Rio Rancho this weekend walked out of a Republican campaign office miffed and ticketless Thursday after getting this news:
Unless you sign an endorsement for President George W. Bush, you're not getting any passes.
The Albuquerque Bush-Cheney Victory office in charge of doling out the tickets to Saturday's event was requiring the endorsement forms from people it could not verify as supporters.

Minor BS about an alleged "Democrat operative group" omitted as it is BS.

Yier Shi, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee...said campaign workers got such verification by checking to see whether, among other things, someone has contributed money or volunteered for the campaign.

An endorsement form provided to the Journal by Random says: "I, (full name) ... do herby (sic) endorse George W. Bush for reelection of the United States."

I swear to God that is exactly as the Albuquerque paper had it. Any similarity to the swearing-in process used by the dastardly Hedley LaMar in the movie "Blazing Saddles" is entirely in the mind of the reader. To continue:

The John Kerry/John Edwards campaign on Thursday issued a news release that asked, "Shouldn't all New Mexicans have the right to see their VP?"

Ruben Pulido Jr., a spokesman for that campaign, said the Democratic Party has no screening requirements for those interested in seeing Kerry or Edwards.

When Kerry visited Albuquerque earlier this month, a contingent of Bush supporters were in the crowd. The Associated Press has reported that the group chanted "Viva Bush!" during the event. The AP added that Kerry urged the crowd to tolerate the Bush supporters.

Let us devote today's Two-Minute Cheney Love to a prayer: Oh Lord, We appreciate Thy divine restraint which hast kept Thou from smiting this foul slug, which art a boil upon the ass of Thy creation. We humbly beseech that Thou keep it up right through Nov. 2, after which Thou art to feel free to snuff it in any way Thou art comfortable with, and is least likely to get slime on Thy hand. Amen.

So Gov. Bush says the electronic voting machines ARE just fine, dammit, and paper trails are evil and communist if not downright liberal. But then who is this "President" Bush who thinks Republicans should get absentee ballots if they want to make positively, absolutely sure their votes get counted?

(via Palm Beach Post, although every paper in Florida has picked up on this, as well as LA and Billings, Montana):

After spending months blocking Democratic efforts to equip touch-screen voting machines with printers to produce paper ballots, Gov. Jeb Bush on Thursday found his position at odds with his own party.
In a mailing to Republicans in a Miami-Dade County state House district, the Republican Party of Florida urged voters to cast absentee ballots, warning that "electronic voting machines do not have a paper ballot to verify your vote in case of a recount."

The argument is identical to the one U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Delray Beach, has made in federal and state courts in hopes a judge will order Secretary of State Glenda Hood, a Bush appointee, to equip touch-screen machines with printers before the Nov. 2 presidential election.

"The Republicans should send that flyer to Gov. Jeb Bush and tell him to get his head out of [the sand] and create a paper trail for all voters so that we can be sure that every vote is counted," Wexler said. "This is an appalling disgrace."

Okay, Wexler really did say "head in the sand", I just put those brackets around it to make you think he really said what I *know* all of you naughty people would have said if it was you.

But let's take a look back at how this whole Flyergate thing came about in the first place. You know who started it? The Indians! For this we consult the
S. FL Sun-Sentinel:

The Republican apology stemmed from a glossy mailer paid for by the GOP [which] featured a smiling President George W. Bush and urged voters not to take a chance with the touch-screen machines.

"The liberal Democrats have already begun their attacks and the new electronic voting machines do not have a paper ballot to verify your vote in case of a recount," the front page of the mailer reads. "Make sure your vote counts, order your absentee ballot today."

The GOP flier was mailed to voters where incumbent Rep. Juan-Carlos Zapata, a Republican, is running in the primary against challenger Frank Artiles.

Zapata downplayed the mailer and insisted that he had no involvement in its distribution.

However, he said it surfaced as a response to an earlier mailer distributed by the Miccosukee Indian tribe that also used the president's image on behalf of the write-in contender.

"The Miccosukee brochures had George Bush all over it, and I think the party, just from a political standpoint, felt uncomfortable with something out there like that that wasn't for a Republican candidate, and they wanted to get something out there," Zapata said.

Maybe Mr. Zapata should spend more time explaining why one of the contenders in a Republican primary isn't a Republican. Any time he has left over he can spend explaining the importance of paper trails to his party leaders.

So they mobilized every real cop, rent-a-cop, SWAT team, both remaining members of the Massachusetts National Guard and anybody else they could find with a uniform, to guard agaist the dread forces of Protest expected to descend on Boston, right?

And what did they get? The Dread Pirate Roberts and a guy with a toilet plunger. I love it:

(via Pittsburg Post-Gazette)

BOSTON -- The Revolution officially began at noon yesterday with a Battle of the Bands between the Lyndon LaRouche Youth Movement and a cadre of anarchists dressed as pirates.

The LaRouchies, a weird amalgam of far-right conspiracy theorists, have taken to singing black spirituals and Bach cantatas all over town. They do this in four-part harmony and do it quite well.

The anarchists, who had gathered in Copley Square to prepare to march on the FleetCenter convention site, took offense at the LaRouchies crashing in. They crowded against the intruders, banged on drums, and chanted, "Are you hungry? Eat the rich!"

This went on for about 10 minutes, at which point one of the pirates engaged in a mock duel with a masked guy carrying a toilet plunger. For the record, the pirate won.

Boston has been anticipating trouble for a week now. Under an umbrella group called The Bl(A)ck Tea Society -- the "a" in black is parenthesized to stress anarchism -- an assortment of left groups sent a few hundred marchers to send the message that the only difference they can see between George W. Bush and John F. Kerry is about four inches in height.

Thursday was the day for "decentralized actions," which meant some groups planned to break the law, but wouldn't tell the organizers. One thing these guys learned from the Reagan administration is the importance of plausible deniability.

The first action started around 10 a.m. when a dozen young men on bicycles, led by the chief pirate, whose attitude toward reporters would have done Teresa Heinz Kerry proud, lazily circled the intersection of Boylston and Clarendon.

"Hold the intersection!" the chief pirate yelled. Traffic was blocked for a few minutes, until a woman in an SUV edged her way through and shouted her displeasure.

"We're protesting the DNC!" one bicyclist yelled.

"You need a sign or something, you idiot," she replied. In Boston, dissent is respected, but people demand clear labeling.

Suddenly, a phalanx (and I've been waiting to use that word all week) of police arrived. On bicycle. There was a bicycle chase. The anarchists sped down Clarendon, followed by 30 uniformed Boston policemen pedaling hard. The group made a long circuit around the Copley Square area, then returned.

There were no arrests, motorists were annoyed and, possibly to everyone's amazement, the United States was still a capitalist nation. The Democratic National Committee is invulnerable to bicycle attack.

Oh yeah...almost nobody used the "Free Speech Zone" except reporters doing standups in front of it. These folks are really going to have to try harder in Manhattan if they expect accomplish anything beyond being offered jobs promoting off-Broadway theatrical productions.

With no TV, I won't know how Kerry's speech was until tomorrow... But I hope he did well.

Squirrels have been recorded using high-pitched ultrasonic "whispers" that are inaudible to the human ear but warn each other of danger.
(via Independent)

It always amazes me when it happens: The Wingers all suddenly start using the same lines, without seeming to communicate....

Now I know how it happens!

Let's be positive! With Kerry as President, this kind of nonsense will stop:

The Environmental Protection Agency will be free to approve pesticides without consulting wildlife agencies to determine if the chemical might harm plants and animals protected by the Endangered Species Act, according to new Bush administration rules.

The streamlining by the Interior and Commerce departments represents "a more efficient approach to ensure protection of threatened and endangered species," officials with the two agencies, EPA and the Agriculture Department said in a joint statement Thursday.

Under the Endangered Species Act, EPA has been required to consult with Interior's Fish and Wildlife Service and Commerce's National Marine Fisheries Service each time it licenses a new pesticide. But that hasn't been happening for some time.

"Because of the complexity of consultations to examine the effects of pest-control products, there have been almost no consultations completed in the past decade," the officials acknowledged in their statement.

The heads of the two wildlife services will presume EPA's review work is adequate in cases where EPA doesn't seek a consultation.

Aaron Colangelo, an [Natural Resources Defense Counsel] staff attorney, said the new rule benefits the pesticide industry at the expense of endangered species.

"The fact that the consultations are so complicated counsels for better protection, not lesser protection," he said. "The solution to ignoring it for decades isn't to rewrite the rule so they can continue to ignore the consultations. The solution is to start complying with the Endangered Species Act."
(via AP)

I love this latest example of Bush depradations. It combines all the best features of Bush policy-making:

1. Selling the EPA off to the pesticide industry

2. Denigrating the scientists at the wildlife agencies

3. Having the people who already know the answers they want (the EPA) deciding when to ask questions

4. Dealing with "complexity" (like nuance) by insisting it doesn't exist

and last but not least

5. Spewing poison wherever they go.

A billion here, a billion there—pretty soon, you're talking real money!

Hey, remember those twenty-somethings the RNC/CPA hired because they sent in their resumes to the Heritage Foundation? And only because? Maybe they know where the money is!

U.S. civilian authorities in Baghdad failed to keep good track of nearly $1 billion in Iraqi money spent for reconstruction projects and can't produce records to show whether they got some services and products they paid for, anew audit concludes.

The one-star general overseeing reconstruction contracts in Iraq said in response to the audit that the lack of documentation didn't prove the money was wasted.
(via AP)

"Trust me!"—that's Bush=speak for "Fuck you!"

"We believe the contracts awarded with Iraqi funds were for the sole benefit of the Iraqi people, without exception," Army Brig. Gen. Stephen M. Seay wrote to the inspector general.

You "believe"? That's a new one—faith-based accounting!

The investigators reviewed 43 contracts and found 29 had incomplete or missing documentation. For each of the 29, "we were unable to determine if the goods specified in the contract were ever received, the total amount of payments made to the contractor or if the contractor fully complied with the terms of the contract," investigators wrote.

The report said investigators could not track down 52 of 164 randomly selected items in an inventory of more than 20,000 items overseen by KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton. The missing items included two electric generators worth nearly $1 million, 18 trucks or SUVs and six laptop computers.

Looting! After lying, that's what Republicans do best!

Many people are unemployed, right? Around 1.3 million by "official" numbers, although between new people coming into the labor market, those whose benefits ran out but who still don't have work, and the general propensity of Bushco to cook the books on government-issued statistics it's hard to say for sure.

Many people, even if employed, don't have health insurance. True? True. Trust me on this one.

Those people, we hate to tell you, are just lazy whiners. Because the Bush campaign is on top of these problems, dammit! Per Yahoo news

(Reuters) - A campaign worker for President Bush (news - web sites) said on Thursday American workers unhappy with low-quality jobs should find new ones -- or pop a Prozac to make themselves feel better.

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?" said Susan Sheybani, an assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry Holt.

The comment was apparently directed to a colleague who was transferring a phone call from a reporter asking about job quality, and who overheard the remark.

When told the Prozac comment had been overheard, Sheybani said: "Oh, I was just kidding."

Now we would hate to take a casual comment by a campaign worker, whose experience base appears to consist of working for Dick Armey and winning a low-level beauty pageant, as the official position of Dear Leader. That would be cruel, and class warfare, and all that. Almost as bad as taking a video of a candidate's wife, telling a guy who's been stalking her for a decade to "shove it," and playing it umpty-zillion times without context or background.

So let's look back a little ways, to July 16 or so, during the National Governor's Conference. I posted one rude crack from that event but managed to miss this other item entirely, possibly because it seems to only have appeared in an obscure paper in Olympia, called, logically enough The Olympian:

July 16, 2004--Washington Gov. Gary]Locke said Washington state spends about $1 billion a year paying for services for seniors that Medicare doesn't cover.

Reed Dickens, a spokesman for the Bush-Cheney campaign, said Locke's criticisms were off-target.

Dickens said Bush has proposed different solutions to help the uninsured. He added, "Most Americans who don't have health care don't have health care by choice."

So there you have it. Ambition, willpower and Prozac. Just like Dear Leader himself, and look where he got in life having started out as the son of a lowly turd miner.

Osama? Opium farmers? Taliban remnants?

Naw, they're doing fine.

We managed to run off Doctor Without Borders. I think this story may have slid under the radar because AP used their actual name:

(via Boston Herald)

Medecins Sans Frontieres became the first major aid agency to quit Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban.

The Nobel prize-winning medical relief group denounced the U.S. military's use of aid to persuade Afghans to snitch on insurgents, saying it risked turning all relief workers into targets.

The withdrawal of Medecins Sans Frontieres, which had 80 international volunteers and 1,400 Afghan staff in the country before the June attack, is the most dramatic example yet of how poor security more than two years after the fall of the Taliban is hampering the delivery of badly needed aid.

MSF, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999, has been working in Afghanistan for 24 years - through a decade of Soviet occupation, a brutal civil war and the rise and fall of the repressive Taliban.

Hey, give it to Mikey! Mikey'll eat anything.

(via DailyNews (NY via LA))

BOSTON -- Conservative radio host Michael Reagan went on TV to criticize his brother's speech here Tuesday and bitterly complain that Nancy Reagan loves him best.

"He is her favorite," Michael Reagan said on Fox News. "Ron can do no wrong. I mean, basically that's it, Ron can do no wrong."

Gee, I wonder why that might be? Poor Mikey. He'd so like to have this portrayed as a Cain and Abel story, and can't figure out that Tom and Dick did it better thirty years ago.

A friend stationed in Balad, Iraq, sends the following message from a local policeman:


And, to think, after all those schools we opened for them....

1- SNACK NAZIS!
From Judd Legum at the Center for American Progress we are informed:

"The First Family...does not snack...They are very good at respecting meal time hours and do not eat between meals...there is no snacking..." - White House Pastry Chef Roland Mesnier

What? That sounds down right un-American to me. Afterall, what kind of real American doesn't snack? America is snack happy. Snack snack snack. A yummy snack is America's crack. It's always been that way. As a matter of snack, I mean fact!, I just got done eating a nest of baby wrens that I discovered living in an old rusty coffee can nailed to the side of the house. I don't need some Vichy Frenchman gourmand telling me I can't snack between meals or between other snacks or during hikes in the woods at 2 am! God damn it. And I'm sure Mr. President Bush would agree with me on this.....

"President Bush fainted for a brief time Sunday in the residence of the White House while eating a pretzel and watching a professional football game on television."

See what I mean. Thats what we real Americans call extreme snacking. Although, strictly speaking, I'm not sure quaaludes are considered a "snack". However, eating a bunch of em and choking on pretzels and falling down and thrashing around like a wounded gecko while watching football games on the tv console is pretty cool especially if you happen to be fiddling around with the remote control at the time and accidentally launch a intercontinental ballistic nuclear strike on Australia or Denmark or China or where-ever. Woo-hoo!, "Dead Bug!" Hey, you there, pass the nuts.

2- The Death of Outrage
Remember when that bagman of extreme snacking Bill Bennett wrote that book about how, according to some guy named John J Miller writing over at that Amazon.com place, "The commander in chief sets the moral tone of the nation; a reckless personal life and repeated lying from the bully pulpit call[s] for a heavy sanction." Yes, well, apparently the "heavy sanction" breathing has been called off for the time being. Or something like that. At least thats the plan if you've been following the recent happy talk coming from your local tv console. I'm sure Bill Bennett is hiding under his Victorian moral compass as I write this.

Anyway, riggsveda writes in with a link to a Jonathan Chait column via The New Republic which argues that there ain't nothing wrong with, as riggsveda points out, "calling a fool a fool." I haven't yet read the TNR/Chait article myself but I plan to because I've been thinking some on the subject of vitriol and venom and all that kind of thang. I haven't decided what kind of adjustments I might make to my own manufacture and output of poisonous spew. It does actually become pretty tiresome at times, and I really get sick of listening to myself do it, but, at this point I have no intention of abandoning the spigot altogether. Not as long as there are still Rush Limbaugh's and Ann Coulters and Sean Hannity's and Tom Delay's and Rick Santorum's and on and on and on.... loosed upon the land. Maybe I'll go retrieve my copy of Bill Bennett's The Death of Outrage from the bathroom, and, if there are any pages still left in it, scan the text for whatever little left behind posies of wisdom it might contain. Heh.

3 - AP Plays RNC Foot-C with EC? Hmmm?
I had read the squirrelly Associated Press item, which I suspected amounted to so much statistical nut gathering with respect to Electoral College vote results, and was happy to discover that someone decided to dissect the thing. Stephen Crockett and Al Lawrence, hosts of Democratic Talk Radio, mailed in their results and you can read all about it right here: Faulty Misleading AP Story. Definetly check it out before the morons on your tv console begin repeating the AP fantasy as if it were drilled in granite.

4- T-shirts!!!
Every body loves T-shirts. Especially if you're like me and you hardly ever wear anything that isn't made out of tent canvas. Therefore, you can buy yourself some nice soft 100% cotton T-shirts from Kerry Tshirts.net Made in the USA.

5- Fighting Words Fighting Back
This is the mailbox find finale. From "No Mind" at Fighting Words Comics. Really, turn off the tv console, fix yerself a bowl pretzels and a quaalude tonic and run off to visit FWC. And leave that remote control thing alone! "No Minds" cartoons are funny and well drawn and aren't afraid to call a fool a fool. So go visit the Archives and see for yerself. A couple of my favorites include "Bush's Conversation With God" and "The Rove Plan". There are a lot more than that on the list, so, you know what to do. Thanks for the snacks "No Mind"!

Laissez les bon ton roulette.

*

Man, the RNC is going to distribute 8 million anti-Kerry videos? Nice to see them taking the high road.....

Heh (the totalled car).

Heh heh (another biking crash).

Heh heh heh (the doctor's prescription).

Heh heh heh heh (the skipped medical exam. We wonder why?)

OK, OK, we're being positive! We called him "the President," didn't we?

And I almost forgot—one of Bush's Major Accomplishments is the passage of a prescription drugs bill. Hmmmm... Maybe He can identify?

I wonder why?

Following a disclosure that a computer crash erased records from Miami-Dade County's first widespread use of touchscreen voting machines, election reform groups want an audit in more than a dozen counties during Florida's Aug. 31 primary.

State officials Wednesday insisted auditing wasn't necessary because all touchscreen votes were counted during the 2002 gubernatorial primary election, even though records of the votes were lost during computer crashes last year. Some records of other elections also were believed lost.

A coalition of election groups contend the problem, however, could be indicative of further problems with the machines — and the only way to know for certain that votes are cast, tabulated and reported accurately is if an audit is done during a live election. They want the state to audit touchscreen voting machines in 15 counties.
(via AP)

Hey, maybe they'll find the votes in an "unlabelled binder" (back).

Oh, wait, the votes are electronic...

Well, heck! We all know computers never lose anything! Mine certainly doesn't....

Well, after reading Tom's post below - see Can This Be True? - I can more fully appreciate the hilarity value of this charming little bit of Bush family lore.

From the Jay Leno Show - May 12, 2004:

MRS. BUSH: Sure. Sure. (Laughter.)

Actually, when he was running for Congress the very first time, his mother told me -- Barbara Bush said, never criticize George's speeches. So I really took her advice to heart and never criticized any of his speeches.

I knew there were plenty of other critics without me being one of them. Until one night, we were driving into our driveway and he said, tell me truth, how was my speech. And I said, well, it wasn't that good. (Laughter.) And with that, he drove into the driveway, drove into the garage wall. (Laughter and applause.)

[Leno] Q Wow.

MRS. BUSH: That's really true.

[Leno] Q I can see why she didn't want you to that. (Laughter.)

All right. More with the First Lady right after this. (Applause.)

Interview of First Lady Laura Bush on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno Nbc Studios Burbank, California | May 19, 2004 ~ transcript - White House.gov

Well, now we know what "Altoid Boy" is really carting around in his little tin box of "mints". Oooo, what do the pretty red ones do!

*

Are we seeing a trend here?

This is an op-ed piece by a couple of guys from The Economist, hardly a lefty rag but not a Republican mouthpiece by any means.
(via LATimes)

BOSTON — One of the secrets of conservative America is how often it has welcomed Republican defeats.. In November 1992, George H.W. Bush's defeat provoked celebrations not just in Little Rock, where the Clintonites danced around to Fleetwood Mac, but also in some corners of conservative America.

"Oh yeah, man, it was fabulous," recalled Tom DeLay, the hard-line congressman from Sugar Land, Texas, who had feared another "four years of misery" fighting the urge to cross his party's too-liberal leader. At the Heritage Foundation, a group of right-wingers called the Third Generation conducted a bizarre rite involving a plastic head of the deposed president on a platter decorated with blood-red crepe paper...

[A] few conservatives might welcome a November Bush-bashing: the certain belief that they will be back, better than ever, in 2008... In four years, many conservatives believe, President Kerry could limp to destruction at the hands of somebody like Colorado Gov. Bill Owens.

I find the historical analysis here weak [go read details for yourself, we can always argue in comments] and the conclusions even more so. The groups that are so far hanging on to the "conservative movement" barely managed to eke out enough votes to steal connive their way into the White House last time. Who else are they going to cut out for being "too liberal"?

I smell grapes turning sour in the Texas sun.

George had better dig up a new crucifix or other knicknack to give to his dear pal, Gospodin "I Looked in His Eyes And Saw Into His Soul" Vladimir. If you haven't been following the story of the YUKOS Oil Co. in Russia I don't know exactly how to explain it, but Putin is engaged in a war-to-the-knife power struggle with the owner of the company. Today a court ordered that the company stop pumping oil. They haven't even done this yet and prices in the futures market are spiking badly. The guy at your local Hess station is probably out changing the numbers on the pumps even as we speak:

(via NYT)

U.S. light crude futures rose 52 cents to $42.36 a barrel,[prices as of story circa 10 this morning-Ed.] nine cents below June's 21-year high. ``We're going up on the back of the YUKOS news,'' one dealer said.

YUKOS pumps around 20 percent of the crude supply in Russia, the world's second-biggest oil exporter after Saudi Arabia, and if its sales stop, the company could fold quickly

When Bushco and Prince Bandar were rigging their little ploy to run the gas prices up in the summer then drop them for election time, I think they forgot a bear in the corner.

UPDATE 4 p.m. EST: (via Xinhua)

Light sweet crude for delivery in September soared 1.21 dollars to 43.05 dollars a barrel, the highest recorded for the contract since it was launched in 1983.

President George W. Bush is taking powerful anti-depressant drugs to control his erratic behavior, depression and paranoia, Capitol Hill Blue has learned.

The prescription drugs, administered by Col. Richard J. Tubb, the White House physician, can impair the President’s mental faculties and decrease both his physical capabilities and his ability to respond to a crisis, administration aides admit privately.

“It’s a double-edged sword,” says one aide. “We can’t have him flying off the handle at the slightest provocation but we also need a President who is alert mentally.”

Tubb prescribed the anti-depressants after a clearly-upset Bush stormed off stage on July 8, refusing to answer reporters' questions about his relationship with indicted Enron executive Kenneth J. Lay.

“Keep those motherfuckers away from me,” he screamed at an aide backstage. “If you can’t, I’ll find someone who can.”
(via Capitol Hill Blue)

I think someone should ask Scotty about this, how about you?

"Fahrenheit 9/11" nominations: George W. Bush ~ best actor in a tragedy/comedy action adventure thriller:

IFC Films is distributing the movie with Lions Gate and they will all determine the best strategy for the upcoming Oscar campaign. But, Zap2it has learned that Moore may want to launch a campaign urging Academy voters to also consider George Bush as best actor.

Moore has said that Bush is "a great comedian" in his movie and garners a lot of laughs. The ad campaign idea could be a joke, but the Academy has issued a warning that Oscar ads should not be negative, or in bad taste. - LINK - U.Entertainment.com

I'd like to thank Uncle Dick and Paulie Jug Ears and Rummy and Condi and Colin and our great Director Ahmad Chalabi and Judith Miller and all the fabulous nooze media script writers and Pentagon embed production people at CNNMSNBC/FX studios and, uhmm, uhmm, and..... now watch this drive!

*

So, the "adults are in charge" are they?

Millions in U.S. property lost in Iraq, report says - (via Bloomberg News)

Halliburton Co. has lost $18.6 million of government property in Iraq, about a third of the items it was given to manage, including trucks, computers and office furniture, government auditors claim.

The auditors couldn't account for 6,975 of 20,531 items on the ledgers of Halliburton's KBR unit, according to a report by Stuart Bowen, auditor for the coalition provisional authority inspector general.

Halliburton is providing services to U.S. troops under a contract that has generated $3.2 billion in revenue so far. LINK

Gives an all new meaning to the term "losers" doesn't it.

Update: WallyCox Lives (see comments) makes a good point:

"Just because it is on an inventory sheet doesn't mean it was actually purchased or there. Next step is to get them to prove they ever actually had it, because I'll bet you we got charged for it, as well as the cost of moving it over there."

Good point, especially since Hal-Burton and Co. are all part of the crew that spends a lot of time claiming to have things that aren't really there in the first place (WMDs, tangible evidence, competence, integrity, a hotline to God, etc...).
Should be no surprise if it turns out that the office furniture they claim to also possess does not actually exist. They're still "losers" though, no matter how ya look at it.


*

The rafters are ringing with applause, whistles, shrieks of joy. The band is playing a jazzed-up version of James Taylor's "Carolina In My Mind." The candidate releases his wife from the post-introductory hug and steps to the podium.

He waves, then makes the sit-down gesture to the throng. As the tumult begins to quiet he reaches conspicuously into his pocket for a sheaf of notes. Into the relative quiet he begins to read....

"I thank you more than words can say for the support that has led to my being here tonight.

It is therefore with a heavy heart that I must tell you I cannot accept your nomination for the Vice Presidency of the United States. Recent health problems have arisen which..."

Into the absolute dead silence which has filled the hall his next words ring out clearly:

"How the heck did Dick Cheney's notes get mixed in here??"

Okay, there would be some logistical problems as paramedics would have to be summoned for many delegates, and hotel laundry services would be overloaded with the number of people who soiled their own or other peoples' garments with involuntary spitting of beverages, but I really think it could work.

Consider this your Dick "Dick" Cheney Two-Minute Love for today.

No TV.

How did it go?

And what story is the SCLM botching now? Atrios, of course

The Man in the Grey Turtleneck—now I can say it—Duncan Black is #8 on Technorati (measured by links) and #5 on the TTLB ecosystem (ditto), has had over 23,000,000 visitors since 2002, is first in our hearts, and does he get any fawning media coverage? Any media coverage? N-o-o-o-o!

Let's look:

The LA Times? N-o-o-o-o-o! Even though they mention Technorati and TTLB!

Pravda on the Potomac? N-o-o-o-o-o!

US A Today? N-o-o-o-o-o!

But surely Atrios's local paper—Philadelphia, home of The Mighty Eschaton Building—will cover the story? You think? N-o-o-o-o-o!

You know, Atrios is the only blogger ever to have helped bring down a major politician: Republican Senator and Strom Thormond adulator Trent Lott, when Krugman plugged the Eschaton blog in the Times.

Yet the media don't mention Atrios at all.

I wonder why?

Robert Scheer opines:

Without dissent, five prominent Republicans joined an equal number of their Democratic Party peers in stating unequivocally that the Bush administration got it wrong.

As early as May 2001, the FBI was receiving tips that Bin Laden supporters were planning attacks in the U.S., possibly including the hijacking of planes. On May 29, White House counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke wrote national security advisor Condoleezza Rice that "when these attacks [on Israeli or U.S. facilities] occur, as they likely will, we will wonder what more we could have done to stop them." At the end of June, the commission wrote, "the intelligence reporting consistently described the upcoming attacks as occurring on a calamitous level." In early July, Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft was told "that preparations for multiple attacks [by Al Qaeda] were in late stages or already complete and that little additional warning could be expected." By [late July], "the system was blinking red" and could not "get any worse," then-CIA Director George Tenet told the 9/11 commission.

It was at this point, of course, that George W. Bush began the longest presidential vacation in 32 years. On the very first day of his visit to his Texas ranch, Aug. 6, Bush received the now-infamous two-page intelligence alert titled, "Bin Laden Determined to Attack in the United States". Yet instead of returning to the capital to mobilize an energetic defensive posture, he spent an additional 27 days away as the government languished in summer mode, in deep denial.

"In sum," said the 9/11 commission report, "the domestic agencies never mobilized in response to the threat. They did not have the direction, and did not have a plan to institute. The borders were not hardened. Transportation systems were not fortified. Electronic surveillance was not targeted against a domestic threat. State and local law enforcement were not marshaled to augment the FBI's efforts. The public was not warned."

In her public testimony to the commission, Rice argued that the Aug. 6 briefing concerned vague "historical information based on old reporting," adding that "there was no new threat information." When the commission forced the White House to release the document, however, this was exposed as a lie: The document included explicit FBI warnings of "suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York." Furthermore, this briefing was only one of 40 [briefings] on the threat of Bin Laden that the president received between Jan. 20 and Sept. 11, 2001.

And to top it all off:

Bush, the commission report also makes clear, compounded U.S. vulnerability by totally misleading Americans about the need to invade Iraq as a part of the "war on terror."
(via the Puliter-heavy Los Angeles Times)

Wow! I now I feel really safe!

Every word a polished gem:

It's election night, and early returns suggest trouble for the incumbent. Then, mysteriously, the vote count stops and observers from the challenger's campaign see employees of a voting-machine company, one wearing a badge that identifies him as a county official, typing instructions at computers with access to the vote-tabulating software.
Advertisement

When the count resumes, the incumbent pulls ahead. The challenger demands an investigation. But there are no ballots to recount, and election officials allied with the incumbent refuse to release data that could shed light on whether there was tampering with the electronic records.

This isn't a paranoid fantasy. It's a true account of a recent election in Riverside County, Calif., reported by Andrew Gumbel of the British newspaper The Independent.

[In] Florida, which may well decide the presidential race ... last month state officials rejected a request to allow independent audits of the machines' integrity.

Let's not be coy. Jeb Bush says he won't allow an independent examination of voting machines because he has "every confidence" in his handpicked election officials. Yet those officials have a history of slipshod performance on other matters related to voting and somehow their errors always end up favoring Republicans. Why should anyone trust their verdict on the integrity of voting machines, when another convenient mistake could deliver a Republican victory in a high-stakes national election?

(via slow-footed, slow-witted, only reason to read 'em is Krugman* New York Times)

I just hate it when Krugman is coy. Don't you?

* OK, Matt Bai too, back)

Though the AP packages it very, very gently:

Bush charged up punishing climbs and down steep dirt paths on his high-performance bike Monday, at one point sailing over the handlebars and landing flat on his back.

[H]e rides with abandon. He takes on dangerous sections that would give veterans pause.
(via the San FranciscoChronicle)

Sounds like compulsive risk-taking behavior, to me.

Bush has suffered a few spills. On May 22, he lost traction on a dirt road, scraping his chin, upper lip, nose, right hand and both knees.

But does the story mention that Bush's spokesman claimed the fall was because of recent rains, when it hadn't rained in two weeks? N-o-o-o-o (back)

And now the good part:

Monday's ride brings his entourage past the new office that contractors are close to finishing, a 2,500-square-foot structure with a stone facade and lots of windows where he says he will probably practice his convention speech next month. He slips at first, saying he will practice his inauguration speech there.

A slip, eh? Sounds like trademark arrogance, to me.

A question the SCLM won't ask: "Is the President taking any painkillers for his injuries?"

Bloggers are talking about Atrios's disquise coming off, but, Skippy the Bush Kangaroo got em talkin' at CNN. Check out this exchange below. Daryn Kagan speaking with someone named Regina Lewis (whoever that is), an "AOL Online Adviser" (whatever that means).

KAGAN: And here's a blogging angle for you, Regina, you might know about. The bloggers are actually watching this show, and they watched your segment yesterday.

LEWIS: Oh, absolutely.

KAGAN: I received an e-mail from a blogger named "skippy the Bush kangaroo." Not really sure where that comes from. But he or she, whatever Skippy is, took offense at our discussion of perhaps that bloggers are not putting complete truth out there, and he said, "Aren't mistakes sometimes made in journalism as well?" Skippy, point taken. And we appreciate you watching.

LEWIS: Yes, and I think what you're seeing is -- yes, I'm glad to hear that. The lines are blurring, too. You know, there's the opinion pieces, and a lot of the bloggers are also linking to resources like the Associated Press and talking about what they see on CNN. So it's kind of the merging of the best of both worlds, if you're mindful of what you're reading and where it's coming from.

"Skippy.... took offense at our discussion of perhaps that bloggers are not putting complete truth out there" (?) Ok, apparently the ironic details contained within Skippy's actual email escaped Kagan. What Skippy reminded her of, which she obviously forgot to mention (oh sure), was her own less than stellar performance when it comes to "putting the truth out there." For a full explanation of what Kagan forgot to mention read Skippy's reminder here

And, to advance the cause of irony even further, Kagan and Lewis eventually got around to plugging Matt Drudge's little rumor mill. Great waterwheel of "complete truth" and accuracy in reporting that he is.

LEWIS: Yes, it's the "Earth to Kerry" shot that appeared on Drudge yesterday,...

Well, so much for being, "mindful of what you're reading and where it's coming from."

Moving along. Some of the Kagan / Lewis conversation about bloggers consisted, for the most part, of often incomphrehensible jabber like this:

KAGAN: We talked about the television ratings, which on the broadcast networks were not fantastic. Is there a way how of monitoring how the bloggers, how many people are making hits on there?

LEWIS: There is. The online numbers were pretty consistent. You see big polling numbers, a lot of interest in specific issues. Also, you know, the rumor mill. That's what people are really after. So these circulated things mean yesterday, a blogger account, we talked about they want to get into the parties, well, here's why maybe they wanted to keep them out. Someone went up to Hillary Clinton's handler and asked her a question that you and I have asked a lot of people, "Who are you wearing?" Apparently, they were told, look, you're wearing a black shirt, she's wearing a white blazer, get over it.

Also, you know, Terry McAuliffe was spotted. I guess young girls tend to flock to him when he walks in places. Note to everybody here: Cell phone cameras, they are everywhere. So that's the kind of stuff that seems to be getting a lot of traffic. It's more the gossip than the substance, for better or worse.

Huh?, Yeah, well, you can try to figure that one out if you like. It certainly does a fine job of answering the question. Is there a way how of monitoring how the bloggers, how many people are making hits on there? Jeezis.

The next question should be: is there a way how of monitoring how... many viewers are throwing furniture at their friggin' tv sets every time CNN beams this kind of convoluted cacaphony into their living rooms?

Because, one way how or another, I might like to blog about that.

Maybe it all made more sense if you were listening to the exchange instead of reading the transcript as I did. I dunno.

In any case, a little free advertising never hurts and it was nice to see Skippy the Bush Kangaroo get a mention from the SCLM, who have, until now, largely gone out of their way to pretend that the bloggers - aside from Andrew Sullivan - don't exist.

CNN transcript of the exchange.

UPDATE: RESOURCE LINKS. Thanks to Skippy for leaving the links and descriptive summaries below in the comments thread.::

1st Post about the subject, with our email to ms. kagan en toto...

2nd Post delighting in the mention we got on cnn...

3rd Post with links to the actual transcript which not only completely misquoted us, but also proved our point about pots, kettles, and the color black vis a vis fact-checking in various media.

*

Because "Nach Hitler, Uns" was such a brilliant strategy the first time around:

One useful way of estimating how little separates the Democratic and Republican parties, and particularly their presidential nominees, is to tot up the issues on which there is tacit agreement either as a matter of principle or with an expedient nod-and-wink that these are not matters suitable to be discussed in any public forum, beyond pro forma sloganeering: the role of the Federal Reserve, trade policy, economic redistribution, the role and budget of the CIA and other intelligence agencies (almost all military), nuclear disarmament, allocation of military procurement, reduction of the military budget [how many more synonyms for 'military spending' can you pad this list with, kids? --TK], the roles and policies of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and kindred multilateral agencies, crime, punishment and the prison explosion, the war on drugs [ditto...], corporate welfare, energy policy, forest policy, the destruction of small farmers and ranchers, Israel, the corruption of the political system.

(Alexander Cockburn, "Why the Democrats Deserve Nader")

Oh, but why stop there? They also have similar or the same retrograde positions on the liquidation of the ruling class, anarcho-syndicalist worker councils, left-wing deviationism and the Kronstadt rebellion. St. Ralph, meanwhile, has politcally correct answers for all of these issues, which he'll be happy to tell you about when he isn't accepting money from the same forces denounced in the paragraph above.

Via the USA Today, a Gannett production (the WalMart of small town newspapers.)

Posted 7/26/2004 11:38 PM | Updated 7/27/2004 12:05 AM

Coulter column canceled after editing dispute
By Mark Memmott, USA TODAY

BOSTON — USA TODAY's plan to have conservative columnist and author Ann Coulter write a daily opinion column from the Democratic convention was scrapped Monday after a dispute involving the first piece she submitted. Coulter was replaced by Jonah Goldberg, another conservative columnist and frequent CNN commentator.

[...]

Brian Gallagher, editor of USA TODAY's editorial page, said of Coulter: "We had a disagreement over editing. We worked diligently to resolve the differences and couldn't, so we decided to part ways." He said the column had "basic weaknesses in clarity and readability that we found unacceptable." LINK

"basic weaknesses in clarity and readability..." Hahahaha! No SHIT Brian! Golly dood, when did ya figger than one out! Jesus Christ, great revelations in journalism ay?

Some folks sure is late risers.

*

Photo



Pictured: Tom Tomorrow (aka: Dan Perkins), who - judging from the crazed look in his eyes is apparently receiving mild electrical charges from that wire thing in his pocket - standing with Atrios (aka: Duncan Black) and a couple of other people I can't identify.
See entire photo for full details. Link provided above.

If it weren't for Atrios (aka: Duncan Black) this weblog wouldn't exist - period. End of story. Small peeper in the blog pond it may be. Lambert, Leah, Tresy and the farmer would have never have been heaped together in a common cause to be later joined by Tom and Xan. And thats the stark god damned orphan train truth.

Neither apparently would drinkie winkies exist - (Jeebus!), whatever those are, and I'm not sure I want to know what they are unless they involve a Radcliffe College social club and screwing in a cornfield. (where you can lose more than your coat.)

In any case, heres to you Duncan Black (aka: Atrios), accidental father of Corrente. Yours in revolution. The summer spawn of 2003 and all future bastard children of the Eschaton thank you.

Photo linked above is from last evenings Dem National Convention which featured a fiddler named Jason______, Ugg, I forgot, playing the crowd out to what I recall was a short take of John Hartford's Jay Ungar's "Ashokan Farwell." - (?) - Which, if you ask me, should be played in it's full glory at the conclusion of ceremonies. Ya know, at sunset, a finale, in a cornfield beside a lake, with enough drinkie winkies to float a great hippy battleshippy and ultimately drown an entire flotilla of kinky Right Wingee Kool Aid dingies.

If ya know what I mean. And I think you do.

Corrections to above: Jay Ungar's "Ashokan Farwell" - thanks to N. from Seattle for the slap in the head on that one. Also, the tune played apparently was NOT the Ashokan Farwell but rather Amazing Grace, which I usually associate with, uh, funerals. So, for the most part, please just forget this post ever happened.

*

I think I've found Atrios. Go here (scroll down to the bio of Duncan B. Black).

Of course this could just be another pseudonym but this "Duncan B. Black" has worked at Bryn Mawr which is in the Philly area.

Furthermore, Atrios has always said he has lived in Europe and California -- and those are two other places that are listed as places where this "Duncan B. Black" has taught economics.

It's interesting. I have a colleague who taught at Louvain too.

I think I've got it folks.

Apparently the "Goodnight, Moon" meme is spreading... And may all our memes do likewise!

In some ways, Kerry damping down the snark is a good thing. Forces us to say what we're for. I don't think that's a bad thing.

Then again, we do what we're good at...

And now the wingnuts are refusing to use Heinz ketchup. Happened in Newark.

So a bunch of working stiffs have to wait in line at the hot dog cart so some Jeebofascist blowhard can hammer his Big Important Point home to the guy sweating behind the grill... What a farce

Backlash Report | dateline Boston, 07-26-2004.

The big news today, rocking the very foundations of the Republic and which will no doubt become the primary topic of discussion for the klaxon horns of cable TV news noise, concerns Theresa H. Kerry's verbal swipe at one of Richard Mellon Scaife's congregate gnats. You know what I'm talking about so any further detailed explanation is only redundant.

The expression "shove it", as many of you know, being a variant strain of the more traditional family friendly "conservative values" treatment of a similar command, "go fuck yourself", made it's firey debut in Boston on this summer day in history, Monday, July 26, 2004. News of the shocking and ferocious display of visceral spleen venting rage burned across the land like a windswept prairie fire. Children were rushed to safer ground as innocence itself withered in the hot whirlwind! "Shove it?" asked Millie McGill, a twenty four year old sexual abstinence advocate and GOP team leader from Cincinnati. "Shove what? Shove it where? Oh my, what can it mean," she begged, before raising the back of her pale delicate wrist to her fevered vestal brow and fainting politely upon the steps of the courthouse in a dramatic yet poised manner befitting her station.

From coast to coast concerned news organizations and Republican Party emergency management salvage teams were rushed to the scene of the conflagration to help squelch the hot flames of "hate speech" and provide what comfort they could to a shocked and confused citizenry clamouring for leadership in the public square. MSNBC's Fox News branch office manager Joe Scarborough told viewers that this "verbal scorching" marked some kind of sinister new trend in sordid discourse which won't play well with God fearin' beer drinking NASCAR crash enthusiasts and genteel pickup-truck driving assault weapons owners in America's heartland.

"Scarborough country is in mourning for our nation," he declared. "These kinds of terroristic verbal assaults leaping from the blast furnace of freedom hating liberalism embodied in the Democratic Party are cremating our Christian heritage, incinerating the sanctity and institutions of capitalism, marriage, and property rights... burning down the very fortifications of western civilization itself!"

Gosh.

Elsewhere, soft spoken Right Wing radio talk show behemoth Rush Limbaugh was rushed to a local hospital following an apparent "substance" overdose. Sources close to the investigation indicated that the normally sedate celebrity was so distressed by reports of the heated exchange in Beantown that he suspended his usual programing, drove to a nearby park, and proceeded to quell his inner pain by consuming an entire Ricotta cheesecake, six deep lard-fried ham fritters, one supersized Banana's Vince Foster and a potentially fatal hot shot of Wildnil (TM). A team of veterinarians from SeaWorld, a character lawyer, and a traditional family values public relations detoxification unit were quickly deployed to the location and are currently monitoring Mr. Limbaugh's critical bodily functions.

A spokesperson for Mr. Limbaugh, when asked by reporters to comment on the possibility that the conservative host might be backsliding into the jaws of ravenous gluttony and the hollow folds of narcotic dependency, responded: "Rush is a real patriot and a gentleman, you are a left wing media character assasin socialist and a terrorist coddling traitor! You should move to Cuba or Madison Wisconsin. Take your liberal anti-Christian baby killing homosexual loving un-American agenda and and and... stick it up your wazoo!"

In other news...

*

I don't have a TV, so I can't. How's the convention going?

As our party leaders (and delegates, and entirely undeserving bloggers such as Kos and Atrios and Billmon) gather in Boston, the word has gone forth that we are to avoid "Bush-bashing" and speak only of positive matters.

I hear and obey. I obey so thoroughly I implore all readers to seek inspiration in the words of Dear Leader his ownself, which I received in an email recently. Since the party who sent it to me also appears to have sent it to about 300 of his other closest friends, you've probably already seen these, but what the hey:

The first three years...
can the English language survive?

"The vast majority of our imports come from outside the country."
- George W. Bush

"If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure."
- George W. Bush

"One word sums up probably the responsibility of any Governor, and that one word is 'to be prepared'."
- George W. Bush

"I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments
in the future."
- George W. Bush

"The future will be better tomorrow."
- George W. Bush

"We're going to have the best educated American people in the
world."
- George W. Bush

"I stand by all the misstatements that I've made."
- George W. Bush

"We have a firm commitment to NATO, we are a part of NATO. We have a
firm commitment to Europe. We are a part of Europe."
- George W. Bush

"Public speaking is very easy."
- George W. Bush

"A low voter turnout is an indication of fewer people going to the
polls."
- George W. Bush

"We are ready for any unforeseen event that may or may not occur."
- George W. Bush

"For NASA, space is still a high priority."
- George W. Bush

"Quite frankly, teachers are the only profession that teach our
children."
- George W. Bush

"It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the
impurities in our air and water that are doing it."
- George W. Bush

"It's time for the human race to enter the solar system."
- George W. Bush

Feel free to print out this list and clip each Deep Thought message separately. Paste them on your bathroom mirror, edge of computer monitor, or the heinie of someone at work you dislike, that you may receive their inspirational benefits constantly.

Hmm.....

White House insiders are still fretting over Vice President Dick Cheney 's recent F-bomb attack on a Democratic senator. Seems conservatives are mad he swore and, worse, may punish the Bush-Cheney team by not voting. Bushies say the same thing happened at the end of the 2000 campaign when W fessed up that he was charged with drunken driving when he was a kid in Maine. Bushies think that cost him millions of votes.
(via US News)

Wonder if there's anything else Bush needs to 'fess up on? Like why, when He was living in Cambridge, he wasn't exactly in the nicest part of town? Confession is good for the soul....

His prosecutorial background. As a freshman Senator, didn't Kerry first pull on the threads that unravelled into Iran-Contra, the Fog Machine of the '80s?

And there will be plenty of opportunities to unravel Bush lawbreaking, when Kerry is in office.

Wonder if he'll claim credit the work of the Commission he resisted, tried to sabotage, and stonewalled every step of the way? Probably. He might even believe it.

HELLMOUTH, Texas (Reuters) - President Bush is examining ways to implement by executive order some recommendations from the Sept. 11 Commission which do not have to go through Congress, an official said on Monday.

Bush, under political pressure in an election year to respond to the report's criticism of the government response to terrorism, was conferring with senior aides, the senior administration official said.

Bush, who is on vacation at his Texas ranch, hoped to put some of the measures on a "fast-track" through executive order, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
(via Reuters)

Of course, this would avoid any of those pesky Congressional debates. You know, the kind where Senator Kerry could propose alternatives.

The LA Times reports the story this way:

Kerry has raised the heat on Bush, embracing the recommendations immediately after they were announced Thursday and pledging to implement them his first day in office. "There are imperatives that we must move on rapidly," he said Thursday.

By contrast, Bush had praised the proposed reforms as "serious" but promised only to study them carefully.

That stance began to shift Friday when White House officials announced the president had asked his chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., to head a Cabinet-level task force to determine how many of the recommendations could be implemented by presidential order, without waiting for legislation from Congress.

But Kerry overtook the president again over the weekend, with his advisors announcing Sunday that they had already completed their own analysis and determined that 25 of the 41 recommendations did not require congressional action.

"I offer my full support for immediate action and will work with you to implement the recommendations," Kerry wrote in a letter Saturday to the commission chairmen.
(via LA Times

Heh.

Funny. Neither the Kerry "25 out of 41" data nor his offer made the New York Times. I wonder why?

Kerry's willingness to have real "front porch" conversations contrasts favorably with Bush's unwillingness to show his face in any context other than carefully screened supporters. Of course, like any act requiring courage, this carries its own risks:

The partisan yard signs in front of the ranch homes and two-story colonials of this city's Ward 62 were about evenly divided as Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry brought his campaign through yesterday.

So it wasn't a shock that much of the Kerry visit was devoted to a screaming match between his supporters and backers of President Bush chanting "Four more years!"

To that chant, Kerry responded by asking, "Four more years of what? Four more years of jobs being lost, four more years of the deficit growing bigger and bigger? Four more years of losing our allies around the world?"

At times, the Massachusetts senator, who had come to speak at a forum in a neighborhood cul-de-sac, had trouble making himself heard.

Gee. At a Bush campaign event, you can get hauled away by the cops for wearing the wrong T-Shirt. At a Kerry event, you can drown out a voice you don't want to hear. Interesting contrast.

"What we need to do in America, frankly, is to stop shouting at each other and start listening to each other," he said. "We need leadership that inspires."

In 2000, Bush carried Ward 62, a racially mixed neighborhood on the northeast side of Columbus, by 12 votes out of 4,806 cast. That makes it one of the most closely watched parts of Ohio, one of the most competitive of the battleground states.

Kerry's 90-minute town hall meeting here was rich political theater, with the candidate walking through the crowd in his shirtsleeves answering questions amid the loud protests. At one point, he cradled Hasim Rashid, who is six months old, as he answered a question from the boy's father about prejudice against Muslims.

"Does a 6-month-old hate anyone?" Kerry asked.
(via Inky)

Good question.

Funny thing. Jodi Will-Whore-Em's "coverage" (heh) doesn't mention these details, or draw the obvious contrasts. I wonder why?

A guy named Thomas Frank came out recently with a book called "What's the Matter With Kansas?" discussing why that state in particular votes consistently Republican when all logic suggests they should be solid Dem. (The link is to his "Now" interview with Bill Moyers.)

So how weird is it that some are loudly outraged that Kansas Republicans aren't Republican enough?:

(via Lawrence KS Journal-World)

TOPEKA — Out-of-state groups with anti-tax, anti-immigration and anti-gay messages are flooding Kansas to put down what they see as an insurrection in a traditionally Republican state.

"The Republican Party needs to be reoriented in Kansas," said Stephen Moore, head of the Washington, D.C.,-based anti-tax organization called Club for Growth. "There is a civil war in the party, and we want to make sure the right side wins."

Several non-Kansas religious groups bombarded lawmakers with e-mail and threats of political retribution after state lawmakers voted against a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages.

Moore, the president of the Club for Growth, said if the group could help defeat [State Rep. William] Kassebaum "we can start to impose some discipline in the Republican Party. This is crazy thinking that states can tax their way to prosperity," he said.

"I don't know a lot about Kansas," Moore said. He predicted that in five years "there will be no pro-tax Republicans left in Kansas."

If this geek did know anything about the state's history he would know that things that start in Lawrence can spin badly out of control, and think about the name of John Brown. But until he does let's enjoy the spectacle of infighting on the Dark Side.

That the people who funded MoveOn want to keep it up their efforts and even intensify them after the election in November (back)—well, it's hard to see that as anything other than good news. Eh?

Oh, and it turns out I'm not the only one who thought Little Jenna Bush was a little bit too like her Dad for comfort. Heh. Oh, it's a Times story, and I used a TinyURL. Can any readers tell me if this link lets them go directly to the story?

Isn't it nice that people from this great country, the richest in the world, known as a "hyperpower" in geopolitical circles, has people who go out among the wretched of the earth and Do Good for them?

(via WaPo)

At least 73 people slept in cars overnight, and a handful pitched tents around the fairground in anticipation of the long lines...More than 800 volunteers ran the clinic, sponsored in part by the Remote Area Medical Volunteer Corps.

On Friday alone nearly 60 volunteer dentists extracted about 1,300 teeth at the fifth annual free comprehensive health screening. They also completed about 550 fillings and 125 teeth cleanings that day.

"They look at their teeth fatalistically," Dickinson said of the clients in a telephone interview. Many people who came to the clinic lack health insurance and had never visited a dentist before.

About 3,600 people received medical attention, including vision and hearing screenings, Pap smears and electrocardiograms at the annual clinic. Although a few children came to the clinic, most patients were adults or senior citizens who cannot afford medical care from a local provider.

Volunteers who interviewed patients said many of them are former miners who took positions as part-time clerks at Wal-Mart and other local businesses after mine jobs disappeared.

Some volunteers who have participated in medical missions in developing nations compared the area's health profile with what they have seen in the world's poorest countries.

At last year's clinic, a doctor found that a woman had cervical cancer. She was treated at a nearby hospital. In developed countries with strong screening programs, rates of cervical cancer are low.

Yeah, you probably guessed it. This happened to be in southwestern Virginia. I am not, repeat not, mocking up above the medical people and other volunteers who do this project once a year. I just hope they go home and kick butt at their medical societies to work out the details of how we're going to do single-payer care in this country instead of continuing to whine about whether or not it's needed.

Can today's Democratic Party do that? Or is today's Democratic Party at best a holding action? (Well, look at what they did to our first love, Howard Dean. For all that his Vermont operation didn't scale, Dean had a spine. And as Kerry—God save him—tacks toward the middle, it looks more and more like the Democratic Party is rejecting Dean's spine transplant as an alien graft.

Can we do better? That will take money. And a message. The good news, and the point of Xan's post (back) is that there are people starting to work on exactly those problems.

Everybody needs to read the article excerpted here. So it's long; it's Sunday. Curl up with the Times, for once, with pleasure:

Weakened by the Republican takeover of Congress and then his impeachment, Clinton's lasting legacy to the party seems to have amounted to something far less than an ideological modernization; somewhere along the line, Clintonism devolved into a series of rhetorical gimmicks -- ''fighting for working families,'' ''working hard and playing by the rules'' -- aimed at appeasing conservatives and winning over pet constituencies like ''soccer moms'' and ''office park dads.'' Underneath all the now-tired mantras, there remains a vacuum at the core of the party, an absence of any transformative worldview for the century unfurling before us.

Into this vacuum rushes money -- and already it is creating an entirely new kind of independent force in American politics. Led by Soros and Lewis, Democratic donors will, by November, have contributed as much as $150 million to a handful of outside groups -- America Coming Together, the Media Fund, MoveOn.org -- that are going online, door to door and on the airways in an effort to defeat Bush. These groups aren't loyal to any one candidate, and they don't plan to disband after the election; instead, they expect to yield immense influence over the party's future, at the very moment when the power of some traditional Democratic interest groups, like the once mighty manufacturing unions, is clearly on the wane. Meanwhile, Rappaport and the other next-generation liberals are gathering on both coasts, having found one another through a network of clandestine connections that has the distinct feel of a burgeoning left-wing conspiracy. They have come to view progressive politics as a market in need of entrepreneurship, served poorly by a giant monopoly -- the Democratic Party -- that is still doing business in an old, Rust Belt kind of way. To these younger backers, investing in politics is far cheaper than playing in the marketplace, and the return is more important than mere profit: ultimately, they say, it is the power to take back the country's agenda from conservative ideologues.

Go read the whole thing.

The rules of the game have changed.

Wow. Looks like the Times is actually covering a real story (Xan).

$300 million would buy an awful lot of whores, wouldn't it?

This may be the last election in which you will vote for a Democrat.

Yeah, you read that right. Now pick your jaw up off the floor. Then grab a soothing beverage and get ready for the roller-coaster ride of a lifetime. Folks, this one is big:

(via NYT)

[Rob] Stein read a few reports that liberal research groups had published on the rise of the conservative movement. Then he began poring over tax forms from various conservative nonprofits and aggregating the data about fund-raising and expenditures. He spent hours online every night, between about 9 p.m. and 1 in the morning, reading sites like MediaTransparency.org, which is devoted to tracing the roots of conservative groups and their effect on the media. To call this an obsession somehow seems too mundane; Stein spent much of the spring of 2003 consumed with connecting the dots of what Hillary Clinton famously called the ''vast right-wing conspiracy'' and then translating it into flow charts and bullet points.

The presentation itself, a collection of about 40 slides titled ''The Conservative Message Machine's Money Matrix,'' essentially makes the case that a handful of families -- Scaife, Bradley, Olin, Coors and others -- laid the foundation for a $300 million network of policy centers, advocacy groups and media outlets that now wield great influence over the national agenda. The network, as Stein diagrams it, includes scores of powerful organizations -- most of them with bland names like the State Policy Network and the Leadership Institute -- that he says train young leaders and lawmakers and promote policy ideas on the national and local level. These groups are, in turn, linked to a massive message apparatus, into which Stein lumps everything from Fox News and the Wall Street Journal op-ed page to Pat Robertson's ''700 Club.'' And all of this, he contends, is underwritten by some 200 ''anchor donors.'' ''This is perhaps the most potent, independent institutionalized apparatus ever assembled in a democracy to promote one belief system,'' he said.

''What you need to understand about me is that I try to be respectful and objective about this,'' Stein went on. ''Not only is it a legitimate exercise in democracy, but I think they came up with some extraordinary ideas.'' The problem, he said, was that conservatives had moved beyond those policy ideas, into the realm of attack and innuendo. And Democrats had to understand that they were overmatched.

So Rob Stein and his Powerpoint presentation went forth and...Oh hell, I can't begin to summarize it here. Go read the whole (11 pages!) thing. Then come back and talk. This will be all over the place tomorrow, and believe me, you'll need a head start to wrap your mind around it. This is--just maybe--the dream we've been waiting for!

Asked, "Where is the DD214?!" alert reader and AWOL Payroll Records Jedi Master Paul Lukasiak adds in comments:

I'm not certain there is one. The DD214 is called the "Certificate of Release or Discharge from Active Duty ."

HOWEVER I JUST saw this...)

on the order which SUPPOSEDLY gives Bush an "honorable discharge", the following words appear...

"DD FORM 258AF will be furnished"

And I just found this in the Code of Federal regulations, 32 CFR 887.7 [PDF]

(d) If (obsolete form) DD Form 258AF, Undesirable Discharge Certificate, has been issued,

Aargh! On "the order" where? Which document? Don't keep us in suspense!

Heh. One more Saturday Night, eh?

I looked up into heaven, lord I saw a mighty sign
Writ in fire across the heaven, plain as black and white
Get prepared, there's gonna be a party tonight

Bunch of bloggers poring over documents, timelines, the US Code, and lots of archives ... I love it!

UPDATE In the previous post, Paul Lukasiak gives the URLs for the documents that mention the DD Form 258AF. There are two, both from USA Today (take that, Pravda on the Potomac and Isvestia on the Hudson). Here they are:

Original here


and here


As Paul notes:

It turns out that there is also a DD Form 256AF, which was used for honorable discharges from the reserves. (this is probably the form that was used under normal circumstances instead of a DD214.)

So, is it a DD258 or a DD256? If the latter, that's the honoranble discharge form. Still, it looks like an "8" to my eye. And, to be fair to Bush, both letters do use the word "honorably" (apparently, you can commit payroll fraud and not show up for a medical exam, and still be discharged honorably. Oh-ka-a-a-a-y....)

Of course, all this could be solved very simply: Bush could simply authorize release of all the files, as he promised (back) he would do, but has not done. I wonder why?

AWOL Payroll Records Jedi Master Paul Lukasiak reviews the bidding:

An examination of George W. Bush’s payroll records leads to the conclusion that Bush consciously and deliberately defrauded the United States government for pay and “points” to which he was not entitled. The White House probably doesn’t even know that the payroll records include the data necessary to prove fraud---the proof is found in the “incomprehensible” lines of data at the bottom of the payroll records.

But an examination of the payroll records themselves within the context of the laws and policies concerning pay and credit for training shows that up to two thirds of the money and points Bush received [were] fraudulent.

This article will explain what the policies were, what the payroll records reveal, and how it was impossible for Bush to legitimately receive the credit and pay for the “training” he supposed performed. It will also explore the ways in which these payroll records interface both with other documents in the Bush files and with public statements made by individuals who were involved in this controversy, and demonstrate how there is only one conclusion to be drawn from these records.

George W. Bush committed fraud in claiming credit and pay for most of the “training” he supposedly did in his last twelve months as a member of the Air National Guard.
(via The AWOL Project)

Bush? Paid for work he never did? Who knew?

Lest this work be dismissed as "tinfoil hat"-style ravings, our attention was first drawn to Paul's work by Orcinus (here). Paul is the kind of guy who works out what the holes in the 1970s payroll punch cards mean. In short, he's the kind of investigative journalist... Sorry, you ask: What does "investigative journalist" mean? Well, back in the days when we had a free press....

Anyhow, go read it all, master and savor the detail.

UPDATE Alert reader shystee points us to this handy chart by UggaBugga.

NOTE: Paul Lukasiak seems to be the only man on the planet who understands the Bush military records in depth. Let's remember, in all the furor about the "inadvertently destroyed" records that turned up in an "unlabeled binder" (back), that Bush is already busted. The story is written. It just a distribution problem....

Paul Lukasiak—and why our free press hasn't picked up this material, I cannot imagine—has made himself the expert on aWol's military records. He's learned to decipher the punch cards the military's payroll system used back then, for example. His incredibly detailed analysis is here. Go read.

But I'm a bottom line kinda guy, so I asked Paul:

So the bottom line is... Well, can we nail him?

And Paul answered:

Yeah, well, we can prove that he did not "do his duty", we can prove that the Air Force knew about it and dealt with it, and we can prove that he requested and received pay and training credits to which he was not entitled....

So I guess you can call that "nailing" him.

Now all we have to do is push this story forward to the SCLM.

That should be easy, right? Since we have a free press? And it would seem that the actual military service of a "War time President" would be a reasonable issue to bring up in an election year?

Maybe this weekend I'll go see "The Corporation." Since I've been deep in the bowels of one for six months, now, maybe it's time I figured out what was going on...

Really great political scandals develop their own splendid vocabulary. Nixon gave us the "-gate" locution, for example. So it's a very good sign that the ongoing saga of Bush's mysteriously incomplete military records is developing its own, weirdly deadpan, style. Why, just in the last two weeks we've had "inadvertantly destroyed," and today "unlabeled binder." And who can forget that hardy perennial, aWol? Great metaphors, all of them, catchy, and OpEd ready.

And funny, we haven't heard from Jenna in the last few days. I wonder why? Has she been muzzled?

Well, well! The maladministration found Bush's "inadvertently destroyed" payroll records after all (Xan, writing for the Department of "How Stupid Do They Think We Are?").

More detail is emerging, and here's the money quote from Reuters:

[Defense Finance and Accounting Service spokesman Bryan Hubbard said] that after the Pentagon announced two weeks ago that the records were lost, officials went back to double check, and found an "unlabeled binder" that led them to the right place.
(via Reuters)

Heh heh heh. An "unlabeled binder".... I wonder how many other "unlabeled binders" there are that Bush is praying never get found?

Readers?

NOTE The headline on the Reuters piece is "Bush's Military Records Fail to Dispel AWOL Charges." Now that's the kind of balanced coverage I like to see.

With the convention coming up shortly, much blather is often written about party platforms. In recent decades these documents, particularly, alas, on the D side of the aisle, have become bland and mushy meanderings, designed to appeal to all, offend none, and stupefy anyone foolish enough to attempt to actually read the thing.

This was not always the case. Here's my thought: We ought to hack into the party database, list off the tops of our heads the first couple of hundred offenses Bushco has perpetrated against the body politic, and conclude with this, preferably read by the Rev. Al Sharpton:

That all these things have been done with the knowledge, sanction, and procurement of the present National Administration; and that for this high crime against the Constitution, the Union, and humanity, we arraign that Administration, the President, his advisers, agents, supporters, apologists, and accessories, either before or after the fact, before the country and before the world; and that it is our fixed purpose to bring the actual perpetrators of these atrocious outrages and their accomplices to a sure and condign punishment thereafter.

And when the media mavens and spokespersons of the Other Side have been revived with smelling salts from their fainting couches, and start to burble and whine all over themselves about how we are all just a bunch of MEANIES to say such awful things, we can confess where we got the idea:

the platform of the Republican Party, 1856.
(with thanks to Meteor Blades over at dKos)

Whee-doggies, Jethro! Lookee wuch ah found here unner this rock. And with a wrong number on it, dad-nabbit, guess that was why ah couldn't turn it up earlier. Dawg musta buried it here Ah gess...

(via WaPo)

The Pentagon on Friday released payroll records from President Bush's 1972 service in the Alabama National Guard, saying its earlier contention the records were destroyed was an "inadvertent oversight."

The records cover July through September of 1972, when Bush was working as a campaign volunteer in Alabama. The future president had been transferred from the Texas Air National Guard to the Alabama unit so he could stay in Alabama.

The Pentagon had said that the payroll records for that time period had been inadvertently destroyed.

In a letter to The Associated Press Friday, Pentagon freedom of information chief C.Y. Talbot said the records couldn't be found earlier because officials were using the wrong index number.

The Associated Press was evaluating the documents.

The stack of items filed under "How stupid do they think we are, anyway?" has grown to the point it threatens to topple and crush us all. The best line in this one is the last....that means more to come.

It sounds like a great plan: You install your CEO as vice-president of the United States, and give him a brainless puppet of a president to command. Then you cook up a war and arrange to cut out any competitors, like the French oil-services giant Schlumberger, who might compete with you or your subsidiaries like KBR for a share of the biggest rakeoff from the US Treasury since Teapot Dome.

And you STILL manage to lose money?

(via Chicago Tribune business section)

HOUSTON -- An unexpected charge on a troublesome project off the coast of Brazil pushed Halliburton Co. to a $663 million net loss in the second quarter, the company announced Friday.

Miscellaneous details on revenue-per-share and analysts expectations, blah blah blah, omitted. For details read the Trib story.

Halliburton said the increase in revenues was "largely attributable" to its KBR subsidiary's government contracts in the Middle East.

Um, yeah, we heard about those. But wait! Is there another hint of a dark cloud on the revenue horizons, currently just a faint blur about the size of a man's hand?

Congress is investigating allegations that Halliburton overcharged the government on contracts related to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, and the company denies any wrongdoing.

The charge on the Brazil project emerged upon a detailed review that revealed higher cost estimates, schedule delays and other contingencies that Halliburton hadn't anticipated.

Or is it just possible that Halliburton runs its books the way Hollywood studios do, making sure that losses are huge and public while profits are carefully hidden away so that only the insiders get a share of the net?

Just askin'...

Froomkin is such a contrast to Howie the Whore. Here he is on the 9/11 report. Though Bush dodged a bullet, he may not dodge a fast-moving cancer on the Presidency:

Underneath its everyone's-to-blame veneer, the report includes some weighty assertions that are potentially very damaging to the White House.

The report, for instance, criticizes the concept of the "war on terror" that has been the signature issue of Bush's presidency. It concludes that what is required to defeat Islamist terrorism is something more nuanced [Heh.—Ed.] than that. And it does not support the argument that the war on Iraq was either related to or helpful in that quest.

And its activist list of proposals puts Bush in a reactive posture during a campaign season when he wants to convey a sense of steady and strong leadership.
(via WaPo)

The curious incident of the dog in the night.

"[Glenn Kessler] The report argues that the notion of fighting an enemy called 'terrorism' is too diffuse and vague to be effective. Strikingly, the report makes no reference to the invasion of Iraq as being part of the war on terrorism, a frequent assertion of President Bush and his top aides."

Then, of course, there's the biggest of the Bush Big Lies:

[R. Jeffrey Smith] "Although recent polls have shown that more than 40 percent of the American public is still convinced that Iraq collaborated with al Qaeda and had a role in the terrorist attacks, the commission reported finding no evidence of a 'collaborative operational relationship' between the two or an Iraqi role in attacking the United States. .

The shoot-down orders:

[Spencer Hsu and Bradley Graham]: "An order issued by Vice President Cheney to shoot down threatening aircraft over Washington was not passed on to the pilots of two jet fighters scrambled from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia, because military commanders 'were unsure how the pilots would, or should, proceed with this guidance,' the report says.

They would have been unsure because Cheney is not in the chain of command and could not, legally, have given that order.

So, lots of material for a drip, drip, drip approach. And perhaps the real debate should focus on what has been done since 9/11 on things like port security.

From the Department of "Why Do They Think We Don't Keep Track":

An Army investigation disclosed Thursday that it had reviewed nearly 100 cases involving prisoners in U.S. hands who were abused or died in custody in Iraq and elsewhere, but described the misconduct as "aberrations" committed by a few soldiers — not a systemic failure.

However, the total number of abused prisoners is likely to be considerably higher. The report, for example, counts multiple incidents of abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad as a single case.
(via LA Times)

Well, that's one way to keep the numbers down!

And the Army had so much confidence in the report that they released it on the same day that the 9/11 Commission released its report. Though I'm all for transparency in government, that's just a little too transparent for me....

Don't you just love the way Bush has renamed the GAO from the "Government Accounting Office" to the "Government Accountability Office"?

Say, wasn't it the GAO that Dick "Dick" Cheney told to go Cheney themselves when they tried to let citizens see the records that Cheney wanted to keep secret? See, we're stronger when we're ignorant...

Oh, wait. Silly me! Accountability is for other people!

Anyhow, Krugman has an ostentatiously unshrill column all about accountability:

Will anyone be held accountable for the mishandling of postwar Iraq?

Almost all of the money spent by the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran Iraq until late June, came from Iraqi sources, mainly oil revenues.

But it creates another puzzle: given that the authority was spending Iraq's money, why wasn't it more careful in its accounting?

When a foreign power takes control of an oil-rich nation's resources, it inevitably faces suspicion about its motives. Fairly or not, the locals are all too ready to believe that the invaders came to steal their oil.

As a KPMG audit showed (back) the RNC/CPA didn't even bother to install meters on the loading platforms!

The way to deal with such suspicion is to let in as much sunlight as possible ...

What actually happened was just the opposite. Every important official with responsibility for Iraqi finances was a Bush administration loyalist.

When KPMG auditors hired by an international advisory board finally got to work, they found that no effort had been made to keep an accurate record of oil sales, and that accounting for the $20 billion Development Fund for Iraq consisted of "spreadsheets and pivot tables maintained by a single accountant."

Doubtless by one of the twenty-somethings whose sole qualification for the job was that they submitted their resumes to the Heritage Foundation.

The auditors also faced a lack of cooperation. They were denied access to Iraqi ministries, which were reputed to be the locus of epic corruption on the part of Iraqis with connections to the occupiers. They were also denied access to reports concerning what they delicately describe as "sole-source contracts."

Translation: they were stonewalled when they tried to find out what Halliburton did with $1.4 billion.

And while the U.S. has yet to disburse any significant amount of aid, the Government Accountability Office says that war costs for this fiscal year alone will run $12.3 billion above Pentagon projections.

Will anyone be held accountable?
(Via the only reason to read 'em is Krugman New York Times

Will anyone be held accountable.... Silly boy.... Of course they will! In the election! Assuming we have one, of course....

These guys just don't learn, do they?

The Republican National Committee has asked Bush-backing Roman Catholics to provide copies of their parish directories to help register Catholics to vote in the November election, a use of personal information not necessarily condoned by dioceses around the country.

In a story posted Thursday on its Web site, the National Catholic Reporter said a GOP official had urged people who attended a Catholic outreach event in January to provide parish directories and membership lists to the political party.

"Access to these directories is critical as it allows us to identify and contact those Catholics who are likely to be supportive of President Bush's compassionate conservative agenda,'' wrote Martin J. Gillespie, director of Catholic Outreach at the RNC. ``Please forward any directories you are able to collect to my attention.''
(via Salon (Go on, get the Day Pass)

So let me get this straight. I give my name to my parish for the purpose of getting to know my neighbors, helping my church, serving God, etc.

And then, without getting permission from me, or telling me, another Republican parishioner forwards that information to the RNC (and then, doubtless, to whatever "homeland" "security" and hiring denial databases the RNC is developing).

There's a word for that Republican parishioner: informer.

Really, combined with the existing Republican program (back here) to have informers collect information on their neighbors, this program to collect religious affiliations is reminiscent of nothing so much as post-Weimar Germany in the 1930s, where the National Socialist Party "coordinated" all the institutions, and eliminated all the independent ones.

TROLL PROPHYLACTIC: I'm not, of course, saying anything like "Bush is Hitler." Hitler was, after all, a vegetarian. And I'm not, of course, saying anything like "The Republicans are Nazis." What I am saying is that this is one more indication of the totalitarian impulses of the modern Republican party, that we can learn about the operation of those impulses through the study of history, and that the combination of those totalitarian impulses with modern information technology should be deeply troubling to anyone who cares about the Constitution or democracy.

Well, that headline can be subjected to various interpretions, but, what William Greider is wonderin' on, in this particular case, is as follows:

[snip] Not to risk blasphemy, but shouldn't a special commission look into whether God provided the warrior President with faulty intelligence? Recall that George W. Bush has confided to Bob Woodward that in shaping his plans for invading Iraq he relied on advice from a "higher father," not on Poppy Bush in Texas, the former President. Now we learn from advance news leaks that the 9/11 Commission has concluded from its investigation that it was Iran, not Iraq, that collaborated with Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda terrorists before their attack on America. Oops. Have we gone to war against the wrong country? One assumes it was not the Almighty who confused the two nations. Maybe Bush suffered from a fuzzy connection in his prayer circuitry. So close to God, yet so distant from the truth. [snip]

GZS H Kee-Ryst! Is God's own deputy George W Bush scrambling cosmic decrees and communiques from on high? Could it be the Almighty is making a monkey of the maharajah from Midland!? Or, is something more sinister going on? Is it possible, could it be, that the Devil is playing tricks on our easily finessed messiah! Is God AWOL. Has the throne of 43 been led astray by Lucifer! Could it be that Tricky Dick Cheney is himself doing the Devil's bidding? Has Old Scratch, with help from his cunning legions of devilkin confederates, been ladling an ambrosial slurrylike soup of suppositions, conjectures, and cockeyed newt into Prince W's faith based remedy cup? Is it possible, that the entire time George W. Bush was babbling with God, he was for all common sense malefic purposes being duped by the Devil? And didn't even know it. Doh! Someone fetch the holy-shit water!

Hey, suppose the Devil himself, masquerading as God while cloaked as the wolfish Cheney, were feeding our gallant Biblical Innocent a wicked recipe of sulfurous cooked temptations and ultimate damnations. Shouldn't we convene (as Greider suggests) some kind of state sponsored ecclesiastical tribunal to flush the Demon from the wool? Hold an exorcism in some catechistical sub-committee chamber or, better yet, summon forth the inquisitor Lord Ashcroft of the Absolutes to lash both the the cloven Cheney and his bewitched hapless quarry to a post in the public square, heave on the kindling and the gasoline, and light the whole fasces up like the parched skeletal remains of a used Christmas tree?

Ya know, do some brush clearin'.

Plus, it would give the Bush Bible pounder base a chance to hoot and bellow and prance about around a cleansing bonfire on behalf of tough love, redemption through violence, and the greater glory of God. Think of it as a kind of preemptive strike at Satan. Bring your own beer.

Furthermore, what's all this bid'ness now about Iran's synergistic relationship with AQ and the 911 fiends? You mean to tell me - dang nabitt - oh shucks - sorry - that all this time the Iranians were the true doers and shakers behind the evil deedster reign of anti-Judeo Christian terror! Who misread that dispatch from the True Daddy? And how could our archangels of the hierarchia celesti, currently occupying the blessed folds of the House of Bush, have been so brazenly hornswoggled? Well, hell if I know. Unless, of course, it was all the work of the Devil. Is the Devil still holed up somewhere in an "undisclosed location" beneath the West Wing?

And, as an afterthought, where the hell did that provocateur in residence A. Chalabi git off to? Seems to have vanished like some kind of spectral mist. Hmm. Maybe that jumpy endtimer woodchuck celebritas Tim LaHaye can figure all of this out for us. I sure hope so.

In the meantime I'll be out gathering sharp stones and dry kindling with the flock.

His mistake is not a joking matter, of course. It may be the most egregious example of how Bush's pious self-assurance led the United States into an ill-fated war with colossal misrepresentation of the facts.

Read: An Error of Supreme Dimensions by William Greider - The Nation.

*

At the current rate of 2.25/day, U.S. combat deaths in Iraq could very well hit 1,000 while Dear Leader is making his acceptance speech. That probably works out to one dead American for every balloon falling from the ceiling.

What a fitting achievement.

After I get done howling, that is.

And I haven't even had time to get to the 9/11 report yet!

Feeling safer? No? Well, you're right. The numbers tell the story. So that's why Bush had them faked. Yes, it's an old story, but it bears repeating, because none of the problems have been addressed:

A State Department report, "Patterns of Global Terrorism," provides the most authoritative public information on terrorist activity. This year's report, released in April, was marred by serious errors, including simple mistakes in arithmetic and the wrong cutoff date for the end of the year. It had to be corrected and reissued.

The revised number of people killed or wounded in international terrorist attacks in 2003 was twice what was originally reported, and 56 percent greater than in 2002. The number of "significant" attacks reached its highest level in more than 20 years.

The careless errors ....

Careless? That's being mighty charitable! In future, please refer all stories of Bush "carelessness" to The Department of "How Stupid Do They Think We Are?"

....in this year's report aside, "the big problem with the State data," according to Todd Sandler, an economist at the University of Southern California who studies terrorism, "is the political spin put on the write-up."

For example, an accompanying letter to Congress falsely boasted that "2003 saw the lowest annual level of terrorist attacks since 1969, an indication of the great progress that has been made in fighting terrorism after the horrific events of Sept. 11, 2001."

Another problem is that critical details, including who prepares the report and decides whether an event is significant, have not been made public. What is more, nonsignificant terrorist events have been tracked less thoroughly in recent years, also rendering trends in the total number of events meaningless.

Although an internal review is pending, the State Department has been slow to act to restore credibility to its report.
(via the sadly demoralized Times)

And it gets better! Asked how to improve the report, the malAdministration's response is to give less information, not more!

No changes in procedures to prevent a repeat of the kinds of errors in this year's terrorism report or the perennial partisanship that accompanies it have been announced. The idea of inviting an independent organization to evaluate the report's methods and procedures was shelved, although an internal review is pending.

In a briefing for Congressional staff members, J. Cofer Black of the State Department and John O. Brennan of the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, who accepted responsibility for the errors in the report, floated the idea of dropping the detailed chronology from next year's report. Not only would such a move violate Congress's requirement for "a full and complete report," it would also be counterproductive - more objective information on terrorist attacks is needed, not less.
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Indeed, the errors in this year's report could not have been caught had the chronology been excluded.

So here we have Bush running for election using a newly trumped up slogan whose first word is "Safer."

And the numbers show that "Safer" is, well, a lie.

So where does The World's Greatest Newspaper (not!) put the story? A1? No. As you might expect, A18? No. They bury it in the business section. Are they in the tank, or what?

Zero. Zip. Zilch. Nada.

As of yesterday, 47 American troop deaths -- hostile and nonhostile -- had been announced in the three weeks since an interim Iraqi government took power. That was a marked increase from the 26 deaths reported in the three weeks before the handover but less than in May and April.

The death rate since the power transfer has been almost exactly two a day, the same as recorded between January and July. The rate over the entire period since the invasion in March 2003 has been about 1.9 a day.
(via AP)

In the graphic in the print edition, a good statistic:

Do you know how many of the 900 American deaths have occurred after Bush declared "the end of major combat operations"?

85%.

Mission accomplished, my Aunt Fanny.

No, not Medicare. This time, it's the over-time regulations!

[Tammy McCutchen] was the head of the Department's Wage and Hour Division, overseeing the creation of the overtime rules that are scheduled to take effect next month. She testified before Congress on the regulations in late April and left her government job on June 11. The new rules take effect Aug. 23.

"As you may be aware, the firm of Dickstein, Shapiro announced publicly on June 15, 2004, that Ms. McCutchen ... will focus her practice on counseling clients on employment matters, particularly those related to wage and hour issues, including the new FSLA (overtime) regulations," [Rep. George Miller, D-Calif] wrote.
(via AP)

Of course, this is just standard operating procedure for these guys, so move along, people, move along. There's no story here....

Former President Nixon's private sanctuary, known as the Winter White House, was razed to make way for a new residence.
(via AP)

Actually, Bush has performed the amazing feat of making me long for the days of Nixon. Things were so much simpler then; and the stakes were lower.

This is descending into "how dumb do they think we are?" territory.

(via AP)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Thirty-nine prisoners have died in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan since the fall of 2001 and there have been 94 cases of proven or suspected abuse, the Army said Thursday in a broad new report giving a more precise and higher estimate of the scale of the abuse.

Still, the Army report concludes there were no systemic problems that caused or contributed to the abuses. All of the wrongdoing was committed by soldiers who violated Army rules and regulations, at times aided by commanders who either encouraged abuses or looked the other way, said Inspector General Lt. Gen. Paul Mikolashek.

The acting Army secretary and its top general said they took responsibility for the abuses while insisting that they were not sanctioned by Army leadership.

Frankly I'm going to skip all the parts about what Army personnel did, aside from noting the desperation with which they are still clinging to the "few bad apples" theory, and the fact that this still doesn't jibe with the Red Cross reports on abuse and "ghost prisoners". Procedures exist to track down military misbehavior. The "civilian contractors" though...let's see what this report has to say about them:

- Civilian interrogators working on an Army contract were accused of mistreating prisoners in two separate incidents, including pouring water on the head of a prisoner forced into an uncomfortable "stress position." The interrogators' employer, CACI International Inc., plans to investigate further, spokeswoman Jodi Brown said Thursday. She said that in one incident military interrogators reportedly used the same techniques as the contract workers.

But interrogator training was often incomplete and inconsistent, the report said.

The Army's contract with CACI did not require the civilian contractors to have military interrogation training. Eleven of the 31 CACI interrogators who worked in Iraq did not have military interrogation training, the report said.

I would have a comment at this point except that my brain has momentarily lost the capacity to form rational thoughts. Now that this layer of whitewash has been applied, it's really time for Sy Hersh to blow this open about the torture of children.

Josh Marshall suggests that the leaking of the Berger story is just plain old-fashioned panic on the part of the GOP.

This observation makes a fair amount of sense. Pre-eminent poll analyst Ruy Teixeira's got a few posts up about the rather dismal poll numbers the Bush administration is having to come to grips with -- W is apparently falling behind Kerry before the Democratic National Convention and they're facing the fact that he may not be able to climb out afterwards.

Furthermore, polls are now showing Kerry significantly ahead (Kerry 47%, Bush 41%) in the "swing states" which has to be contributing to the recently stampeding of the GOP herd on the Berger story.

If the economy, which has shown considerable signs of weakness of late, backslides further, W and the boys are in even bigger trouble. In that event, one could see a few of the "red" states turn "blue." Heck, apparently Kerry has now drawn even with Bush in, of all places, Arizona.

Folks, if W can't win Arizona, he's in really deep doo-doo.

Therefore, as Republicans have begun to realize over the last few days that their incumbent is in big trouble (incumbents that poll in the forties in June haven't won a presidential race in more than fifty years) they have begun to grasp at anything in a vain attempt to keep their guy in the game.

That's why they're pounding on the Berger thing.

It's about all they've got.

So I click over to Google to do my usual afternoon news sweep, and there I find a headline from Reuters, not JeffDaumerNews or anything, advising as follows:

I Am Not the New Cannibal, Says Armstrong

Neil? Lance? Fine Young? Is "Soldier of Fortune" Magazine recruiting for a reenactment of the Donner Party?

Or...could it be that "Armstrong" is a junior Bush staff member? And they're organizing one of those Outward Bound-type bonding adventures for the Cabinet this weekend, to reinforce solidarity and mutual trust and all that? God knows that backbiting bunch of backstabbing paranoids could use such a break, being dizzy from spinning the 9/11 report into "It's All Clinton's Fault!".

But if that's the case, who was asking about cannibalism?

These things puzzle me. Don't have time to check the matter myself on account of I am, as you can clearly see, supposed to be working.

Republican words:

The proposal for a director of national intelligence was criticized by Tom Ridge, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. "We don't need more bureaucracy. We need more analysts, we need more Arabic-speaking analysts, and we need a lot more human intelligence," Ridge said on Fox News Channel.
(via USA Today)

Republican actions:

Nine United States Army linguists, including six trained to speak Arabic, have been dismissed from the military because they are gay.
(via Sydney Morning Herald)

Too bad the Republicans let their agenda of hate get in the way of protecting the country.

Oh, wait. Of course. Now I understand. Gay people are traitors by definition, so the Republicans are protecting the country by getting rid of them. Now I understand.

Thank heavens there's at least one institution under the Bush administration that's still capable of being embarassed:

The U.S. military acknowledged Thursday it held an Afghan man for a month after taking custody of him from a trio of American counterterror vigilantes who have since been arrested on charges of torturing prisoners at a private jail they ran in the Afghan capital.

The American military has tried to distance itself from the group, led by a former American soldier named Jonathan Idema, insisting they were freelancers working outside the law. But spokesman Maj. Jon Siepmann acknowledged that the military had received a detainee from Idema's group at Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul, on May 3.

Siepmann said officials were looking into whether Idema had other contact with U.S.-led forces here, but insisted he was in Afghanistan "entirely of his own volition."

Officials in Washington have also denied the trio were employed or sponsored by any arm of the U.S. government.

"We did not commission him to go out and look for terrorists," Siepmann said.

Well, who did? Are these guys, like, premature Afhgan War Re-enactors who went over there as some kind of hobby? Who funded them?

The seven defendants went on trial in Kabul on Wednesday, charged with hostage-taking and torture.

Idema, of Fayetteville, N.C., and codefendants Edward Caraballo of New York City and Brett Bennett could be jailed for up to 20 years if convicted. Afghan and U.S. officials have left open whether they will be sent to the United States to face more charges.

The Americans didn't testify. But in court Wednesday, Idema told reporters that the group had tacit support from senior U.S. Defense Department officials and that they once offered to put his team under contract.

Gee, it couldn't be, could it, that Bush is using private contractors in his Middle Eastern dirty war (back) to do jobs that are too dirty for the constitutional chain of command?

Idema said he was in daily telephone and e-mail contact with officials "at the highest level," including in Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's office.

"The American authorities absolutely condoned what we did. They absolutely supported what we did," Idema said. "We have extensive evidence of that."
(via AP)

Well, then life becomes very simple! Idema releases the emails in open court. Wonder if he'll be able to plea-bargain so Bush can cover this up?

Bush:

President Bush on Wednesday described the federal inquiry into Clinton White House national security adviser Sandy Berger's mishandling of classified documents as "a very serious matter."

The FBI:

But a government official who asked not to be identified because of the political sensitivity of the matter said that FBI agents did not regard the Berger inquiry as "a front-burner-type of investigation."
(via USA Today)

The fish really does rot from the head, doesn't it?

Demogenes Aristophanes of the Project for a New American Empire (PNAE) writes:

I spotted something in the Atlantic the other day, an excerpt from David Frum's "The Right Man":

"The Bush staff rose to their feet with a snap that would have impressed a Prussian field marshal. When Bush was in a kidding mood, he direct the staff like an orchestra conductor: He would press his hands palm down to direct them to sit and then, when they had taken their seats, raise his hands palm up to order them to rise again. Only then would they get the final palms down." [see earlier comment thread: HERE]

Sorta' sends a hoary chill up the back of your neck don't it? In any case, Rick Perlstein over at the Village Voice has investigated this kind of eerie idolism/idolatry as it manifests and sustains itself at a grassroots level. So then, if you haven't read Perlstein's "The Church of Bush", you should do so as soon as you can. HERE (July 20th, 2004)

Also, while you're at it (if you havn't already) read: How Can the Democrats Win?, also by Rick Perlstein. This is a long piece which includes a free parable - so you can't go wrong! - but the greater point is focused on the long term investment in not only Dem Party gains, but more importantly, what it will take to invest in, and harvest, the rewards of a long term progessive and populist (in the Jim Hightower populist tradition i hope) liberal movement.

In other words: if Kerry campaign Dems and DLC titty twisters and any number of other think tank bubbles, Beltway baubles, or dull waxed TV "news" media binge drinkers believe that all bloggers and progressive grassroots activists are going to go away after Kerry/Edwards turn Evangelist George W. Bush and his slippery bait fed pod of trained grunting seals back into their holding pool - well, they'd be F%#k!ng WRONG. It's a long term investment in America thang.

I was even gonna write more here on blogging into the future and what that might entail and how i think that might play out post November Tuesday - but - i've decided instead to go outside and throw a Boker Infinity drop point blade at a dumb stump. I know it's only 4 am but i don't care. I enjoy the lonely thutt thutt thutt sound of a knife in a dumb stump. I like the way it reverberates throught the foggy creekbeds and quiet hills in an early morning's night. I like the idea that someone might be laying awake somewhere in a distant hollow listening and wondering "what the hell is that?!" And, "where is it coming from and what does it mean?" Because thats what blogging is kinda like, too, haint it?

So don't forget to sharpen your focus (or focus your lens) on the infinity range from time to time. Gawd knows there is no shortage of dumb stumps to address.

*

George only hates lawyers until they become conservative enough for him to appoint them to the Federal bench. Another such cabal has done what it could to save his sorry ass yet again in Florida:

(via Miami Herald)

A federal appeals court on Tuesday delayed indefinitely a long-awaited Miami trial to decide whether more than 600,000 former felons in Florida could have their voting rights automatically restored.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta agreed to reconsider an earlier appellate panel's order to hold the trial on Florida's 136-year-old law that bars felons from voting.

The decision marked another turning point in the class-action case, which was filed weeks before Florida's divisive 2000 presidential election ended with George W. Bush winning the state -- and the White House -- by only 537 votes over Al Gore.

The ruling also means many ex-felons, who could make the difference in a tight race, will miss out on a chance to vote in another presidential election.

Gov. Jeb Bush's office and lawyers for the state praised the decision as a big boost for their side.

Lawyer Randall Marshall, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union in Florida, said the length of time it took the appellate court just to decide on the state's request for a rehearing -- seven months -- was not unusually long. But Marshall, who has been a vocal critic of the state's disenfranchisement law, said the governor could end it with the stroke of a pen.

''The governor could have an impact on this tomorrow, because he has the authority under the state Constitution to grant clemency in a much broader and quicker way than he has chosen to do so,'' Marshall said. ``He could restore their voting rights automatically with an executive order without requiring them to go through clemency.''

That's really all it would take. It wouldn't overturn the other restrictions the state of Florida has in its infinite wisdom decided to impose on people who have "paid their debt to society" and must struggle somehow to make a living after being released from prison. It wouldn't entitle them to sell real estate, work as barbers or hairdressers, or practice any of the other occupations which require state licenses, not that I ever really understood why one should have to get a license to cut hair anyway. It would just allow them to vote, dammit.

So Billmon took on Nader the other day. He is, I think it's safe to say, seriously pissed:

My guess is that in the end Nader's reasons for treachery aren't all that much different from Benedict Arnold's - it's the vanity and resentment of a hero who's seen the laurels of respect and influence he thinks are his due go to lesser mortals instead. Combine that with the towering rage of a prophet ignored, and it's the perfect combination for betrayal.

But there are times when treason can be as blind as love or justice, and this may be one of them. I'm sure Ralph still believes he's one of the good guys - maybe the last good guy. I can imagine him measuring the handle on his moral spoon and finding it more than long enough to sup with the devil. But that's just one of the acrobatic manuevers an agile mind uses to rationalize evil. It may be there's a part of Ralph's brain that understands what's happening, and is helplessly aghast at what the dominant part of his brain is doing. Or maybe not. Maybe there's nothing left but that angry, ravenous ego, obsessed with its revenge.

In the end it doesn't matter. Ralph's motives are immaterial now. The point is that he has joined (to borrow Saruman's phrasing) with the enemy. And so has become the enemy.

Billmon is such a damn good writer that I become bitter and in this fit of envy try to improve upon his work. So he invokes Saruman, eh? I think the Tolkien character Nader most resembles these days is Denethor, Steward of Gondor:

"What then would you have," said Gandalf, "if your will could have its way?"

"I would have things as they were in all the days of my life," answered Denethor, "and in the days of my longfathers before me...But if doom denies this to me, then I will have naught: neither life diminished, nor love halved, nor honor abated."

So who is it, readers? Saruman or Denethor? Benedict Arnold or just Arnold the Pig? Billmon doesn't do comments any more, but we do. Lay on, McDuffs, and curs'd be he who first cries, "Hold! Enough!"

Just for the fun of it.

Stick with Dick
He's your pick
Don't be flip-flop,
impolitic!

Dick Dick Dick
We want Dick!
Not some Base fed
Red State hick!


Dick is slick
He's no tick
Dick for slapstick
funny side-kick!

Bailiwick Bailiwick
Dick Dick Dick

W! W!
Listen quick
Who else gonna paddle
your boat up the crick?

(photo: GWB at Andover - boolah boolah boolah, ha ha ha!)

Businesspeople, at least so far as their businesses are concerned, can't completely lie to themselves; if they're utterly divorced from reality, the business goes under. (Here contrast the Republican party.) So papers like the Wall Street Journal come as close to the truth as the people who run the country can bear. So the fact that this was the lead story yesterday is interesting:

So far, economic recovery tilts to highest-income Americans
Upper income families, who pay the most in taxes and reaped the largest gains from the tax cuts Bush championed, drove a surge of consumer spending a year ago that helpled rev up the recovery. Wealthier households also have been big beneficiaries of the stronger stock market, higher corporate profits, bigger dividend payments and the boom in housing.

Lower- and middle-income households have benefited from some of these trends, but not nearly so much. For them, paychecks and day-to-day living expenses have a much bigger effect. Many have been squeezedm with wages under pressure and with gasoline and food prices higher. The resulting two-tier recovery is showing up in vivid detail in the way Americans are spending money.

Hotel revenue was up 11% in the first five months of 2004 at luxury and upscale chains, but up just 3% at economy chains. [The luxury Italian company Bulgari's] US revenue was up 22% in the first quarter. Neiman-Marcus...had a 13.5% year-over-year sales rise at stores open at least a year. By contrast, such "same store" sales at Wal-mart were up just 2.2% in June.

"To date, the [recovery's] primary beneficiaries have been upper-income households," concludes Dean Maki, a JP Morgan (and former Federal Reserve) economist.

Weekly earnings, adjusted for inflation, were down 2.6% in June from a year ago. The slip might be transitory, but it was the largest decline since 1991.

Are you better off than you were four years ago?

Bush will only make a public appearance before the kind of crowd that will give him a standing ovation, so he doesn't risk anything with a flip-flop like this one, but will anyone else give any credence to a Bush reinventing himself as a girly-man-style, new age sensitive male? I didn't think so:

"[BUSH]No one wants to be the war president. I want to be the peace president," (via USA Today)

Translation: After November, on to Iran!

Oh, and while we're watching Bush fluff the base, here's another cute little statement:

In Iowa, Bush took a series of mostly easy questions from the audience.

One immigrant asked Bush how he could get permanent-residence status. Bush told him there are procedures he must follow and wished him good luck.

Bush added, "I hope you think it is interesting that you get to come as a person newly arrived and ask the president [sic—Ed.] a question. That's our system. It's an open system."

What's "interesting" about it? The guy was let in only after being carefully screened by Republican operatives, he was probably primed with the question, and if he'd been wearing the wrong T-Shirt, Bush would have had him dragged off and jailed. "Open"? Ha.

Little Jenna has such a sense of entitlement!



Hmmm...

What are the possible side effects of Xanax?

If you experience any of the following serious side effects, stop taking Xanax and seek emergency medical attention or contact your doctor immediately:

• an allergic reaction (difficulty breathing; closing of the throat; swelling of the lips, face, or tongue; or hives)...

(via Drugs.com)

No, but seriously folks—This looks to me like the typical Bush "joking," with the bullying and the contempt just barely under control. Yech.

Remember when Anne Coulter (the Unity Valkyrie Mitford of the Beltway beerhall set) called Rich Lowry, and his bathtub splashers at the National Review, girlie boys? Remember? That was fun wasn't it?

In typical Ann Coulter style, she then called editor Rick Lowry a "girlie boy."

"Did you really say that?"

"I'd just as soon not relive this," she says, "largely because I do not want to look like I'm still making fun of them. Though they really deserve to be made fun of. But the reason so many conservatives were calling, emailing, sending love notes, after I called em girlie-boys, was because for years, you know, there was no Internet, there was no talk radio. National Review determined who was a good conservative and who wasn't. And like the little boy in the 'Twilight Zone' episode who could wish people into non-existence--have you ever seen that? There are like eight people on Earth left, and it's his birthday every day, and they all change the channels to whatever he wants to watch. That is the way National Review was using its power." ~ Capitol Hill Blue, "A Professional Smartass" - By John Bloom / Aug 11, 2003. cached link

Heh. Heh. Heh.

Well, now, anyway, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger - the Jolly Oaf of Hapsburg Lip - has stirred the excitable TVNewsNoise clack valves with stately tone changing denunciations of Golden State Dems as "girlie men" for allegedly pandering to "special interests"; whatever that means. The "girlie men" line, of course, being lifted from the old Saturday Night Live skit featuring two characters named Hanz and Franz. And, because, all the best lines from Schwarzenegger's August '77 Oui magazine interview had been perviously licensed to Jack Ryan for use in his Star Wars "nightclub" act. Like the zinger below where the Governor of California explains why California Democrats can not agree to manly good time Republican Partay state budget courtin' proposals:

just the guys who can fuck in front of other guys. Not everybody can do that. Some think that they don't have a big-enough cock, so they can't get a hard-on. see: Smoking Gun

Stupid stub-dicked special interest pandering "girlie men" Democrats! Sheesh. Is Gov. "Pump Me Up" intimidated by special interest girlies? Never! Is Mr. Olympia '72 afraid of being exploited by up-tight puritanical special interest snivelings! Never never never! Oh big-cock fuck-no never! When asked if he'd ever been exploited by prudish special interest pandering girlies Gov. Schwarzenegger responded:

"No, I'd feel used only if I didn't get something out of it. If a girl comes on strong and says, 'I really dig your body and I want to fuck the shit out of you,' I just decide whether or not I like her. If I do take her home, I try to make sure I get just as much out of it as she does. The word exploited therefore wouldn't apply." [...] "I can look at a chick who's a little out of shape and if she turns me on, I won't hesitate to date her. If she's a good fuck, she can weigh 150 pounds, I don't care." [via: Smokin Gun]

Jeepers. Obviously, the girlies in California's legislature need to work with Gov. Schwarzen-egger by appealing to his better instincts and earlier real world common sense experience. Perhaps they should preface each budget request with the precondition, "I really dig your body and I want to fuck the shit out of you." Why not? The Schwantzenegger does not care if you are a little "out of shape", as long as you are "a good fuck." And, afterall, isn't that what American "free market" enterprise and Declaration of Independence is all about?

Also, all this talk about how Gov. Schwarzenegger's "girlie men" comment is homophobic is like totally so-not true. So stop it! Gov. Schwarzenegger is not a homophobic clod. Gov. Schwarzenegger is not "freaked" out by sweaty, glistening, grunting, fag, I mean manly!, bodies, or anything like that. As a matter of fact the Governor has previously released the following statement in defense of fag, I mean gay! - gay stuff:

"Men shouldn't feel like fags just because they want to have nice-looking bodies...Gay people are fighting the same kind of stereotyping that bodybuilders are: People have certain misconceptions about them just as they do about us. Well, I have absolutely no hang-ups about the fag business..." [via: Smooking Gun]

You see. Bodybuilders and girlie men, I mean gay people!, i mean California State Democrat legislators!, have a lot in common. Governor Shcwarzenegger is not some scaly anti-girly men homophobian terminare lizard and he is not against homosexual business. He was just poking a little fun at California Dems who he believes are a little out of shape but wouldn't mind a good fucking anyway. So, everyone just relax, bend over the ab-machine, and let the Governor have his way.

...we had girls backstage giving head, then all of us went out and I won. It didn't bother me at all; in fact, I went out there feeling like King Kong. [via: Smoking Gun]

Thank God for Fay Wray. Without her King Kong would just be another pumped up monkey in a Hollywood hot-tub.

BTW: Wasn't the original Saturday Night Live skit that Mr. Schwarzenegger was aping, the one featuring the two bodybuilders Hanz and Franz, suggesting, well, uh, that both Hanz and Franz might be a tad self-absorbed, vainglorious, and perhaps even, touched by the moron fairy?

Hmmm.... maybe I'm just I being moronophobic. I'll have to work-out on that.

*

Tonight we got to talking about the first Clinton administration, and how, at that convention (the one with the "Man From Hope" video) we had the sense that things were really moving, that there was momentum, and how we don't feel that this year.

Why the difference?

I think the difference is that this year, unlike 12 years ago, we have to create the movement ourselves.

Have at it!

Sure, the Berger fiasco is not only a distraction from the 9/11 Report but insulation against any forthcoming fallout from indicments in the Plame Affair.

And sure, as Tom points out, it's most like an Elfin Eruption engineered by Rovian operatives (for how a Democratic appointee was eased out and the the post politicized by appointing a Republican loyalist, see The Nation).

And now Berger is gone from the Kerry campaign. But for Berger to apologize for being "sloppy"?!

Dammit, we can't afford to be sloppy!

Confronted with the truth, drunken Republicans riot:

"[The Las Vegas Aladdin Casino and Resort] decided to remove her from the property after she dedicated a song to Michael Moore. This angered our guests who spilled their drinks and demanded their money back," [a hotel official who declined to be identified] said.

The liberal Ronstadt, 58, a 10-time Grammy Award-winner and an icon of the politically-agitated 1970s, praised Moore as a "great American patriot" who "is spreading the truth."

She also dedicated the song "Desperado" to Moore and urged the audience to go and see "Fahrenheit 9/11," which mercilessly slams Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq and his handling of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

According to local media, members of the 4,500-strong audience stormed out of the concert hall, tore down concert posters and tossed cocktails into the air.

Hotel president Bill Timmins then ordered security guards to escort Ronstadt off the premise, even denying her access to her suite.
(via AFP)

Remind you of anything? Like the "bourgeois riot" in Florida?

We'll be waiting for the editorials about how drunken thuggery and portends the end of civilization as we know it....

And what about that hotel official who declined to be identified? You'd think they'd be anxious to be—upholding the honor of their corporation, and all that. Not to mention the First Amendment...

Any Tom Clancy fans reading today? Take a look-see at this little item. A group called Citizens For Legitimate Government has an essay by one Wayne Madsen, described in the credits as "a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and columnist. He served in the National Security Agency (NSA) during the Reagan administration."

This is long but worth it. He starts out:

You have to give the right-wingers credit. The fear tactics they learned from arch-Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels remain at the front of their political playbook. First, they put out the notion that in the event of a terrorist attack around the time of the November 2 election, a postponement of the vote may be necessary. Second, they start talking about the Federal government’s response to such a scenario. It’s the second item we must all be focused upon.

And then he tells you EXACTLY how they could steal it this time. (As Madsen notes, "Like bin Laden, these people never use the same tactic twice.") I cut to the conclusion:

That is what all this talk about a terrorist attack on Election Day is about. It is to prime the population and allow Bush surrogates at Fox News, CNN, and MS-NBC to begin their perception management campaign that an attack will occur around the election. But there will be no postponement of the election or cancellation – this is simply another plan to manipulate the public through the use of phony threats and fear tactics....

To paraphrase James Carville, “It’s California and the voter turnout, stupid!” Forget about canceling or postponing the election. Keep your eye on a “Red Terrorist Alert” on the West Coast for Election Day. That doesn’t take a constitutional amendment, merely an okay from Bush and his homeland security team. They must be stopped – the future of this nation is at stake!

Go read. Now. Take it as tinfoil-hat raving if you like, or start picking out the cast list for the movie version.

Johnny Firefighter that is. And Johnny Policeman, and Johnny Prisonguard. And, oh yes, not to forget Johnny DemCandidate, aka Greg Philips, of whom the Philly Inquirer notes:

Greg Philips, 42, of King of Prussia, has been the Democratic candidate for the U.S. House in Pennsylvania's Seventh District, which includes Delaware County and parts of Chester and Montgomery Counties.

But he is scheduled to announce this morning that he has withdrawn from the race. Lt. Philips has been called to active duty and is to ship out next week for Kuwait.

That leaves the Democrats temporarily without a challenger to U.S. Rep. Curt Weldon, the nine-term Republican.

But back to those other Johnnies...it seems the governors who employ these folks are getting more than a little unhappy. Even the Republican ones.

(via NYT)

SEATTLE, July 19 - With tens of thousands of their citizen soldiers now deployed in Iraq, many of the nation's governors complained on Sunday to senior Pentagon officials that they were facing severe manpower shortages in guarding prisoners, fighting wildfires, preparing for hurricanes and floods and policing the streets.

Concern among the governors about the war's impact at home has been rising for months, but it came into sharp focus this weekend as they gathered for their four-day annual conference here and began comparing the problems they faced from the National Guard's largest callup since World War II.

Gov. Dirk Kempthorne, a Republican of Idaho and departing chairman of the National Governors Association, also said through a spokesman that he was worried about the deployment of 2,000 members, or 62 percent of his National Guard, who are now training in Texas for a mission in Iraq.

California fire and forestry officials said they were not using National Guard troops to battle wildfires plaguing that state, but they did say that they were using nine Blackhawk helicopters borrowed from the Guard to fight the fires. Some of the helicopters are bound for Iraq in September.

In Arizona, officials say, more than a hundred prison guards are serving overseas, leaving their already crowded prisons badly short-staffed. In Tennessee, officials are worried about rural sheriff's and police departments...

But even during a meeting that featured plenty of partisan sniping, Republicans also sounded worried about whether the deployments would leave them vulnerable in emergencies.

Maj. Gen. Timothy J. Lowenberg, commander of the Washington State National Guard, who attended the Sunday meeting with Pentagon officials, said in an interview that he heard worries voiced by plenty of Republicans.

"There are absolutely no partisan pattern to the concerns being raised," he said. "They are being articulated by governors of both parties."

Anyone else find the Sandy Berger story a bit, um, conveniently timed -- two days before the release of the 9/11 report and the week before the Democratic National Convention?

This sounds like vintage Karl Rove to me -- assisted by his little elves in the National Archives and/or 9/11 Commission of course.

Can't you see the meme developing, boys and girls? Democrats are traitors who don't care about national security -- look at what John Kerry adviser Sandy Berger did, right? He compromised national security to cover the Clinton administration's ass, right?

Give me a break. I guess the scariest thing is that this apparently distorted-beyond-belief story comes straight out of the Republican Noise Machine -- and our press reports it just as the RNC fax they just received told them to.

Now, what about Valerie Plame, guys? Why haven't heard anything about that story in a while?

Oh. I guess the RNC hasn't sent you a fax on that one recently, huh?

UPDATE: I see that Josh Marshall agrees with me that this is a malicious leak to distract us all from the looming 9/11 report.

You can't help but wonder what's in it now, can you?

What are they trying to distract us from?

One to keep an eye on:

From Stratfor.com's Geopolitical Diary: Tuesday, July 20, 2004.

Russia: Putin Considers Sending Troops to Iraq

Summary

Moscow is considering a request by the Bush administration to send Russian troops to Iraq or Afghanistan this fall, just before the U.S. presidential election. The move would be of enormous benefit to U.S. President George W. Bush and a risky venture for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who faces his own Islamist insurgency in Chechnya and public opposition to U.S. policy in Iraq. Torn between his desire to support Bush and his need to address domestic concerns, Putin will delay his final decision to the eleventh hour.

Analysis

Moscow and Washington are quietly negotiating a request by the Bush administration to send Russian troops to Iraq or Afghanistan this fall, Russian government sources tell Stratfor. The talks are intense, our contacts close to the U.S. State Department say, and the timing is not insignificant. A Russian troop lift to either country before the U.S. presidential election would give U.S. President George W. Bush a powerful boost in the campaign.

Sources close to Russia's Security Council tell Stratfor that Russian President Vladimir Putin has agreed to the request "in principle" and has directed the Russian General Staff to work up a plan by the end of the month. Before making a decision, however, Putin wants to make sure all logistical and international legal questions are resolved -- perhaps with United Nations involvement -- and he will not move without a formal U.S. request. It is a tough decision for Putin, who will carefully weigh the risks and rewards and likely make his decision at the last possible moment.

More via: The Agonist

*

Iraqis are sick of foreign people coming in their country and trying to destabilize their country. ~ George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., May 5, 2004

I doubt very much that George W. Bush recognized the ironic idiocy contained within his own statement above. Nuance, afterall, is not his thang. Not that I'm surprised. The existence of the entire Bush diktat seems to rely soley upon ironic ideological idiocies and the kindness of some collective disengagement from tangible reality. All frosted over with romanticized Pollyannaesque notions of our national self as a flawless example of eternal goodness and light and liberty for one and for all and for evermore. As if we as Americans were some kind of grande luxe preternatural marvel. Some boundless corpus sanctum hovering above an enormous swamp. America as divinity. All despite our own frequent complicity in tangible substratum historical imbecilities, cruelties, thieving, and national folly.

Our mainstream broadcast media certainly feeds these ongoing Panglossian fantasies. The bogus rationale for war in Iraq and the disclosure of the realities inside Abu Ghraib prison brought forth no end to the lofty pronouncements that Americans are not really like that and America's governing princes would never knowingly sanction such torturous horrors or march the nation to war across a slippery rope-bridge of braided lies and so much woven fribble. Oh no, of course not. But, even if we did, forget it, lets look on the bright side and put all that uncomfortable naysayer negativity behind us. Hey, let's go shopping for designer pharmecuticals!

Which brings me back round to Xan and Lambert's earlier compares to "schools" for "interrogation", torture, cruelties, denials, lies, reality disconnects, and past US state sponsored handicraft south of the border. All of which reminded me of the following:

On August 29, 1970 in Richmond, Indiana Frank Sinatra and Jerry Lewis held a benefit concert "for the family of", and as a tribute to, an American named Dan Mitrione.

Dan Mitrione was a policeman in Richmond, Indiana from 1945 to 1957. In 1959 he would join the FBI. Eleven years later, in August of 1970, Mitrione was kidnapped, held for ransom, and eventually executed by Tupamaros guerrillas (Movimiento de Liberacion Nacional) in Uruguay; sparking an international incident. News organizations in the US made the most of Mitrione's death and funeral, which was attended by David Eisenhower and Nixon Administration Secretary of State William Rogers, all who bewailed the terrible murder of a man the Nixon White House characterized as a "defenseless human being." Ron Ziegler (then Nixon White House spokesperson) praised Mitrione by declaring: "Mr. Mitrione's devoted service to the cause of peaceful progress in an orderly world will remain as an example for free men everywhere.'' [1]

What most American's learned in the late summer of August 1970 was that Dan Mitrione was a "public safety" officer, and, as his daughter Linda exclaimed, "a great humanitarian." For surely, Dan Mitrione was abducted by ruthless evil doers in Uruguay and murdered in cold blood while perfoming an honest days work on behalf of, well, you know, "peaceful progress in an orderly world." After all, character matters.

What most American's didn't know at that time, and their government and media were not exactly falling over themselves to tell them, was that Dan Mitrione, when he was living large, was a walking breathing nightmare factory. A sadistic homicidal missionary of precision pain crafted aloft upon a terrible black state sponsored operational wind. An abattoir butcher. A modern day star spangled battue Diabolous. The madman of Montevideo.

..... post continued

*****
Due to the length of this post I've spilled it over here: Farm Runoff.

So if you'd like to read on click the link and off ya go.

*

Lambert's on the road again, but somehow it doesn't seem right not to have an evening signoff. Probably not an inspirational comment but it's what my beloved grandmother always said when tucking us in at night.

I had actually thought in my younger days that bedbugs were some entirely mythological creature Grandma invoked to get us to go to sleep so she could relax with a glass of something enjoyable. Then I read not long ago that they're not only real, they're making a comeback. I should have figured this fact out the first time I heard Rush Limpopo, all set about with fever trees.

Was it just yesterday I posted "Grandpa Got Run Over By A Draft Board" thinking it would probably turn out to be a mistake of the sort bureaucracies often make? Silly me:

via AP via abcnews.com)

DECATUR, Ala. July 19, 2004 — At 68, many people are slowing down. Not John Wicks: He's going to Iraq. Wicks, a psychiatrist, has been called out of military retirement by the Army to fill a shortage of mental health experts needed to help soldiers cope with combat. He could be gone as long as a year.

The Army hasn't told Wicks what his exact assignment in Iraq is, or where in the country it will send him.

"I believe that the morale in general is not that good since the scandal at that prison," he said, referring to the allegations of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison. "When morale is high, you have fewer of these kinds of problems. And when morale is low you have more."

Wicks said recruiters initially hinted he could go to Europe or a stateside base to relieve a younger psychiatrist who would go to Iraq. The Army even gave him three choices should that scenario play out, and Dr. Wicks chose Italy, Germany and England.

"Well, I now wonder if this was just to get me hooked. Because there's no way I'm going to Italy or any of these places," he said. "I'm going to Iraq."

Back in comments to "Grandpa" (which noted that another category besides "psychiatrist" that was in great demand was "truck drivers") esteemed reader WallyCoxLives had an observation:

My father is 82 years old and a veteran of World War II. He was a mechanic during the war and afterwards until he retired about twenty years ago. He also drove trucks. I wonder if they will be calling him up? He's nearly blind in one eye and losing the vision of his other eye, but that shouldn't stop them.

Wally, I hate to say it, but you and Pops might want to be checking the shortest route to the Canadian line.

"If you build it, they will come," the movie said. You thought they meant heartwarming nostalgia for baseball? Nope, they meant field-testing a policy of classifying damn near anything they like as "terrorism" for the purposes of the criminal justice system.

(via Des Moines Register)

By BERT DALMER

Federal prosecutors say they built 35 terrorism-related cases in Iowa in the two years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

But a Des Moines Sunday Register analysis of the cases found that most defendants had questionable links to violent extremism. Those defendants who could be identified by the newspaper were, in most cases, charged with fraud or theft and served just a few months in jail.

The number of terrorism-related cases even took one court official by surprise.

"If there have been terrorism-related arrests in Iowa, I haven't heard about them," said U.S. District Judge Robert Pratt.

Ironically, Pratt presided over courtroom proceedings in at least six of the criminal cases that federal prosecutors had cataloged as terrorist in nature.

Included among the 35 cases were:

•Five Mexican citizens who stole cans of baby formula from store shelves throughout Iowa and sold them to a man of Arab descent for later resale.

•Two Pakistani men who entered into or solicited sham marriages so that they and their friends could

OMG! So they could take flight lessons? Set up terrorist training camps in Oskaloosa? Negotiate an alliance with radicals at Maharishi Mahesh Yogi University in Fairfield?

continue to live in the Waterloo area and work at convenience stores there.

Okay, so what's the real motive here? You guessed it...

The Iowa arrests were part of a national compilation of statistics cited by the U.S. Department of Justice in requests to Congress for $400 million this year for federal anti-terrorism efforts. The department's figures were again cited last week when Attorney General John Ashcroft lobbied lawmakers for continued support of the controversial U.S.A. Patriot Act, which gives law-enforcement officials greater authority to surveil and search foreigners and U.S. citizens.

Skeptics of the Bush administration's response to the terrorist threat said that lumping minor crimes under the terrorism label could wrongly heighten public anxiety and provide a questionable rationale for more anti-terror resources.

"When people read that they're doctoring the numbers, aren't they going to have less confidence in the Justice Department and the war on terror?" asked U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Ia. "You can't say that somebody's a terrorist when he isn't a terrorist."

Pay particular notice to this: "The Iowa arrests were part of a national compilation of statistics.." That means there is a similar list in YOUR state.

Go read the whole story, particularly the sidebars. This goes a long way to explain why Dear Leader doesn't seem to want to mention what his goals are for his (increasingly hypothetical) "second" term.

UPDATE: Link fixed thanks to alert reader woid. One durn "?" left out and the whole durn thing don't work, durn it.

And just in case you didn't think the Minnesota Republican Party's effort to have informers collect information about the political affiliations of their neighbors (back) wasn't really all about intimidation, here are some comments from the designer of the system, Larry Colson:

[Minnesota Republicans realize] that with Minnesota now "in play", the Cowards will be forced to spend time and money in a state that they formerly took for granted. ...

Larry Colson
Minnesota eCampaign Chair
(via CheneyBush.com)

Nice, huh? For "coward," of course, read "traitor."

Nice words from the party whose candidate can't prove He did his duty in the military (even though He did collect a paycheck).

My Mom, who has a TV, says Kerry's windsurfing on Nantucket.

Well, that shows a pleasing level of insouciance. I hope. Readers?

The Republicans are easing Americans into the idea that it's OK to report their neighbors political beliefs to a central authority.

But don't worry! The central authority is only the Republican Party! Phew! For a minute there, I was worried!

The party has asked 60,000 supporters from across [Minnesota] to figure out what issues animate their neighbors and where they stand in the political spectrum, and report that information back to the party -- with or, possibly, without their neighbors' permission.

The site and the party's reliance on neighborly connections, [Larry Colson, a Minnesota entrepreneur who helped develop the site] said, are ways of filling those gaps. "You're more likely to tell your neighbor what your party preference is when they ask than you are to some stranger on the phone," he said.

Those who seem persuadable will receive campaign literature from Republican candidates -- including President Bush -- with whom the party plans to share its data. Those deemed incorrigible Democrats will be struck from the list.
(via WaPo)

I can think of another name for the GOP "Team Leaders" who will be populating the Republican database with their neighbors's names and affiliations: informer.

Of course, the real nightmare scenario would be a national Republican "enemies list," constructed by winger activists. I mean, who really believes "incorrigible Democrats" will be "struck from the list"? After all, when the time comes to round up the traitors, the list of "incorrgible Democrats" will be a very good starting point. And please refer all comments containing the words "tinfoil hat" to the Department of "No! They would never to that!"

If the Wecovery is so all fired hot, why are more and more suburbanites showing up at food banks?

Appropriately, the Catholic Charities food bank here is tucked in the corner of a shopping mall. Its clients come from generally affluent suburbs; many felt disbelief when hard times compelled them, for the first time, to seek help.

"Of course I'd never gone to any of these things - I didn't even know they existed," said Norma Bacino, who resorted to the food bank after her husband left, leaving four preteen sons in her care.

"You're down and out, you're apprehensive," Bacino said. "Even though you realize you're not the only one, it's culture shock."

Bacino, 44, is part of a phenomenon occurring at urban, rural and suburban food banks nationwide - a surge of first-time clients who never before considered themselves needy but suddenly, because of a layoff or other challenge, cannot pay their rent or living costs.

"Our affiliates all tell us, 'We've never seen so many people come in who we've never seen before, who say they need help just this one time,'" said Kevin Seggelke, CEO of the Denver-based Food Bank of the Rockies.
(via AP)

I blame gay marriage.

Coming to cruise ships near you.

"Hi, I'm on the boat. Can you hear me?"

"YES I CAN HEAR YOU!"

Of course, Stern is way ahead of Limbaugh in the "values" department—not a pill popper, faithfully married, never even needed rehab, and not being investigated by prosecutors for doctor shopping. So naturally Stern is a Democrat:

The first surprise, according to Penn: nationwide, 17 percent of all likely voters polled listen to Stern. The second: Stern fans are just as likely as non-fans to attend religious services daily or weekly; just as likely to be highly educated; more likely than non-fans to have young children at home; and more likely than non-fans to own a gun. In other words, average Americans. And Stern fans in 18 battleground states said that they now prefer Kerry over Bush by 59 percent to 37 percent.

Simon Rosenberg, who directs the New Democratic Network, the group that sponsored the poll, says: "Democrats have been hammered on conservative talk radio for years, and now we have a glimmer of hope. I've seen this guy's impact, first-hand. It's incredible. I went on his show [June 29] to talk about the poll, and right after that, 25,000 people downloaded the poll from our Web site."

It's still possible, of course, that there is no such thing as a shock-jock voting bloc, and that the politicized fans who are messaging Stern's Web site are aberrations ("I just love you so much! I've never registered to vote until recently and I will vote for Kerry... . Some jerks at work don't like you, but I tell them to know their role and shut their holes.").

But maybe the Sterniacs are for real, as even some Republicans suspect. As party strategist Mike Murphy told conservative columnist Andrew Ferguson the other day, "Stern listeners should be Bush voters... . He is a symptom that something's going wrong."

Or, as radio industry expert Harrison says: "In a close race, everything counts. Any slight, insult, remark or incident can count. That's when Howard would count."
(via our own Philadelphia Inky)

I like it when Repubublicans say "something's going wrong." Just as long as they don't do anything about it, and go down to defeat.

The lead story (amazingly enough) in today's New York Times:

The amount of money workers receive in their paychecks is failing to keep up with inflation. Though wages should recover if businesses continue to hire, three years of job losses have left a large worker surplus.

"There's too much slack in the labor market to generate any pressure on wage growth,'' said Jared Bernstein, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research institution based in Washington. "We are going to need a much lower unemployment rate.'' He noted that at 5.6 percent, the national unemployment rate is still back at the same level as at the end of the recession in November 2001.
Advertisement

Even though the economy has been adding hundreds of thousands of jobs almost every month this year, stagnant wages could put a dent in the prospects for economic growth, some economists say. If incomes continue to lag behind the increase in prices, it may hinder the ability of ordinary workers to spend money at a healthy clip, undermining one of the pillars of the expansion so far.
(via NY Times)

It's funny how the news is always how "the economy" is recovering. But the economy is not my personal economy—or yours.

Are you better off than you were four years ago? I'm not. Corporate profits are booming, but I'm falling behind. Why is that?

UPDATE And, whaddaya know, Edwards took advantage of this right away:

Turning to the economy, Edwards referred to a story in Sunday editions of The New York Times that said hourly wages are not keeping pace with inflation. "Is that a news bulletin to you?" Edwards asked the congregants.

"No!" many responded in unison.

"I am here to tell you hope is on the way," Edwards said.
(via CNN)

Sweet!

NYT has a story today about how many old farts (which they unkindly classify as anyone 50 and older) are serving and dying in the qWagmire. Apparently so many are being used up that the Army is looking to replenish the supply...although if you look at the last graph you will see they might want to give this geezer some Attitude Adjustment sessions:

(via Columbia (SC) State)

Seven years ago, Lexington psychiatrist Charles Ham retired from the Army. Or at least he thought so.

Then, the other day, he got a call telling him to report to Fort Jackson for a physical examination.

“You know, I’m 67 years old. Why do you need me?” Ham asked.

The caller explained the Army needed psychiatrists to counsel troops.

A recent study found the suicide rate of soldiers serving in Iraq is higher than for other GIs. The suicide rate in Iraq was 17.3 per 100,000 soldiers compared with 12.8 for the Army overall.

To help remedy the problem, the study recommended the Army send more mental health specialists to combat zones.

Psychiatrists, though, are not among the most-needed troops from the Individual Ready Reserve being called up to bolster the Army, which has been stretched thin by the wars in Iraq and on terrorism.

The Army ranks truck drivers as its top need, followed by logistical specialists who track the flow of supplies on a computer, Humvee mechanics, administrative specialists and combat engineers.

Ham, who retired as a colonel, is subject to being recalled because he’s an officer, Army spokeswoman Andrea Wales said.

There is no age limit for officers to serve, she said...The maximum age on the Army’s physical fitness charts is 62 and over.

Ham said he will have a choice of either serving three months in a combat zone or spending a year at a military hospital in the United States.

Charles Ham still is amazed the Army tracked him down after seven years of retirement.

“You’d think if they can find me in my office, they sure could find Osama bin Laden,” he said.

On the campaign trail, Inerrant Boy lets the cat out of the bag:

"I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn’t do my job."

-- President Bush, quoted in the Lancaster New Era, during a private meeting with an Amish group.
(via Political Wire via Pandagon)

Many interesting assumptions, there, eh?

Interestingly, Political Wire's original source for this story, the Lancaster New Era, is down.

Someone in the blogosphere and/or the Kerry campaign should really be tracking the interviews that Bush gives with these small papers. There's probably much good material there.

The story is how Bush has whipped Rummy back into his kennel and muzzled him, but there's this interesting little tidbit at the end:

William Nash, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a retired two-star Army general who commanded American peacekeeping forces in Bosnia, said the White House's political calculations will determine Rumsfeld's fate.

"Right now everything in this administration is being measured against whether or not it contributes to the re-election of the president in November," he said. "Obviously he's been a lightning rod and oh, by the way, he's also been wrong and that's never good" for Bush.

Nash suspects that Rumsfeld has yet to feel the full force of the Abu Ghraib abuse.

"I don't think there's any particular reason to believe that the Department of Defense is out of the woods on Abu Ghraib" he said.
(via CNN)

It's always interesting to imagine what the Beltway insiders and the SCLM know, that hasn't yet been revealed to the proles, isn't it?

Mr. Hersh?

From the Cassini probe of Saturn:

The international Cassini spacecraft has taken new images of Saturn's two-faced moon Iapetus, possibly offering clues to why the moon has a dark hemisphere and another that is bright, scientists said Thursday.

Researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory hope Cassini's observations of the mysterious moon help determine where the dark material comes from.
(via CNN)

Oh.... Make up your own jokes!

But I know where the dark material comes from....

Thomas Frank, author of "What's the matter with Kansas,"
makes the excellent point that working class Red State voters are totally fucked over by the Republicans, yet vote Republican anyhow. What to do? I mean, after electing Kerry, that is.

[farmer note:] Read Thomas Frank's Sunday, July 18 NYTimes op-ed piece "Failure Is Not An Option, It's Mandatory" via this link: HERE !! NO sign in required !!

For Frank's article "Red State America Against Itself" (which I believe is the article Lambert is pointing to above) minus the LA Times sign in runaround see Tom Engelhardt's Tomdispatch.com posting of it HERE

...or read it via Common Dreams.org: HERE

Each are well worth the effort no matter how you arrive at the page. So don't delay, read 'em today.

As he campaigned around the country last week, President Bush asked voters to give him another four years to make the nation "safer and stronger and better." But with the election less than four months away, one of the biggest mysteries surrounding the president's campaign is what he would actually do if he wins a second term.
(via WaPo)

Here's a newsflash: He doesn't know. 

There really are only a couple of possibilities: either they're waiting to craft their agenda in reaction to what Kerry says (meaning they have no plans of their own) or it's all so evil and twisted they don't want the rest of us to know about it.

Either one is pretty appalling, eh?

Yawn, snarfle. The great thing about having a job is that I have money. The terrible thing is that I don't have time. Oh well.

I sure hope Kerry's speech at the Democratic National Convention is good. I remember nothing about the Clinton video at his first convention, except the feeling it gave me: He's going to make it. I hope Kerry gives me the same feeling.

I also remember the night of Michael Dukakis's defeat. The TV showed Reagan and the Republican Party as national, prepared to rule. The pitifully draped Dukakis stage showed the Dukakis campaign as regional, not prepared to rule. Needless to say, I hope that the Kerry operation gives me that national feeling. Like they're prepared for successs, assuming that they're winners. That they're ready.

There's a lot riding on this election.

I'd also like to see another Seymour Hersh story in the New Yorker real soon now. It's not fair for Hersh to go around the country talking about Abu Ghraib videos of screaming boys being raped. Why tease us? Write the story, already!

Here's another dot to connect. Xan's been writing about how contracts for interrogation in Iraq seem to have been mysteriously let through the Interior Department (!), and at a place called Fort Huachuca. Turns out that General Fast, as well as her subordinate Pappas, and several Abu Ghraib interrogatorps, all got their training at Fort Huachuca, which is the Army's school for interrogation. In fact, the Army considers Fast's work at Abu Ghraib such a success that it's promoting her to head of the school!

A glance at the manuals produced by the school show the "bad apples" theory for the crock that it is. What Fort Huachuca is doing is taking the lessons learned from the Reagan dirty wars and updating them for Bush's new dirty war in the Middle East (back).

In 1996, as part of the campaign to close the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA), activists used the Freedom of Information Act to force the release of training manuals used at the SOA, a notorious counterinsurgency training facility for Latin-American personnel. Those manuals, used at the SOA for many years and distributed in the thousands by the U.S. Army to military, police and intelligence units throughout Latin America, explicitly advocated the use of torture--not just "bending the rules" of interrogation, as some have timidly euphemized the current scandal.

In their investigations, activists discovered that the SOA manuals were adapted from training manuals used by U.S. personnel in Vietnam and translated into Spanish right here in Arizona, at Fort Huachuca.
(via Tucson Weekly)

So much for the "bad apples" theory.

It turns out some people (they may, just possibly, mean us, along with most of the rest of the civilized world) have been saying mean things about CACI just because some of their people torture Iraqis.

(via PRnewswire) (a "news service" for press releases)

CACI International Inc today [June 28 2004] stated that due to the erroneous, inaccurate and false information being widely disseminated and repeated, it has again become necessary to clarify various aspects of its contract arrangements with the U.S. Army to provide interrogator services (an intelligence information gathering function) in Iraq.

Assorted corporate PR omitted for the sake of brevity. But read the following very carefully, looking back to today's other posts for clarification when necessary:

CACI's contract arrangements with the U.S. military have not been fashioned in a manner intended to mislead or to otherwise deceive anyone at any time and any such allegations are totally false. ..

Administration of the [contract] was transferred from the U.S. Army at Fort Huachuca to the Department of Interior at Fort Huachuca on January 14, 2001 as part of a government reorganization that saw the Army contracting office become part of the Department of the Interior when Army operations at Fort Huachuca were substantially reduced.

CACI's Statement of Work..further specifies that the U.S. military will provide readiness training and briefings on rules of engagement and general orders applicable to coalition armed forces, DoD civilians and U.S. contractors, including the provisions of the Geneva Conventions.

CACI's contract requires that employees work under the monitoring and supervision of the U.S. military chain-of-command in Iraq. CACI personnel have no responsibility for management, supervisory or command authority over any non-CACI personnel. CACI operates a full-time in-country administrative chain-of-command over all of its employees in Iraq.

As to widely repeated employee misinformation, CACI has never employed Mr. John Israel. Mr. John Israel was incorrectly identified as a CACI employee in the illegally released, "leaked" sections of the classified (SECRET/NO-FOREIGN) report issued by Major General Antonio M. Taguba regarding allegations of abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison. Mr. Israel is not now and never has been an employee of CACI.

Hmm. Wonder how Gen. Taguba, who seems to be a very diligent person, ever got such an impression?

CACI employee Steven A. Stefanowicz was the only CACI employee identified in the Taguba report. The report alleges culpable wrongdoing on the part of Mr. Stefanowicz; however, [his mouthpiece denies this--ed.]

Just a couple more interesting items...interesting because CACI felt obliged to make these claims:

CACI is not now and never has been involved in political activist pursuits of any kind for its own individual corporate benefit.

CACI does not now have and never has had a political action committee (PAC). The Company makes no effort whatsoever to influence or interfere with the rights of its officers and employees to participate as they see fit in supporting any candidate for office through a private donation.

Go look at the full version of this at the link; there's about three times as much corporate PR BS as what I included here. An awful lot of denial for a company that didn't do anything wrong, don't you think?

Smokey the Bear funds contractor interrogators. 

(via WaPo)

By Ellen McCarthy
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 17, 2004; Page E03

The Department of Interior's inspector general found that lax procurement controls in one of the agency's contracting centers allowed information technology contracts to be misused to hire prison interrogators.

CACI International Inc. of Arlington and Lockheed Martin Corp. of Bethesda were hired to provide interrogation support under umbrella contracts designed to give government agencies quick access to the companies' technology products and services.

The inspector general's report, released last night, blamed a "fee-for-service operation, where procurement personnel in their eagerness to enhance organization revenues have found shortcuts to federal procurement procedures."

Lockheed's employees were hired by the Navy for interrogation work at its base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. CACI provided interrogators to the Army in Iraq, and one of its employees was implicated in an Army report on abuses at Abu Ghraib prison.

Both contracts were awarded by the General Services Administration and managed by the Interior Department's National Business Center in Fort Huachuca, Ariz. The agency's inspector general, Earl E. Devaney, said a lack of oversight of procurement officials at the center contributed to the improper contracting.

Devaney recommended that the agency end contracts with CACI and Lockheed Martin that fall outside the scope of their intended purpose. He urged Interior to develop new policies and management controls.

Interior spokesman Frank Quimby said this week that Interior is going to "get out of the interrogation business." Calls to Quimby were not returned last night.

A GSA investigation of CACI's contract found that it was awarded improperly but cleared the company to continue doing business with the federal government.

Do we see some dots getting connected here? This contract was originally let in 1997 for perfectly innocuous purposes relating to IT (information technology)  services, which is what CACI does when they're not torturing people. And it's more "cost effective" to put an Interior Department operation into Fort Cucaracha down in Arizona since two can live cheaper than one, right?

And most importantly, who, trying to follow a paper trail of funding for an Army base in Iraq, is going to think to look into the budget of the folks who run the National Park Service?

Keep in mind this is on top of the money stolen out of the budget for Afghanistan and misapplied to the qWagmire.  One can only hope some lonely auditor somewhere is figuring out what ratholes those funds went down too.

What's the criterion? Set up the torture system, while avoiding scrutiny. It's the "avoiding scrutiny" part that's really important; since the WhiteWash House is continually inventing cover stories to cover its crimes, old and new, a proven track record for avoiding accountability is key.

From the Baltimore Sun:

Among the handful of Army officers facing scrutiny in the investigation of abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, Maj. Gen. Barbara Fast is perhaps the least known, but among the most important.

Fast, 50, the senior intelligence officer in Iraq, was the key conduit for orders and information...

Conduit, eh? We know where the information was coming from; but where was it going to? And was there a channel into the WhiteWash House? Of course there was!

...that related to Abu Ghraib, which she visited frequently, including the infamous cellblocks 1A and 1B, where abuses took place.

A civilian interrogator at the prison wrote that she was involved in CIA access, and Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, who was the overall commander of military police at the facility, said Fast was aware of a Red Cross report revealing wrongdoing at the prison three months before the scandal broke.

[Fast also installed Pappas and Jordan, who were singled out in the Taguba report, and who ] have been reprimanded. Fast, whose career has ascended rapidly, has been given a plum assignment when she leaves Iraq next month: commander of the Army's intelligence center and school at Fort Huachuca, Ariz., where she served a brief tour as assistant commandant.

Well. Apparently the administration considers Abu Ghraib such a success—maybe they do have OBL on ice?—that Fast is going to teach the techniques developed there to others.

"It's very strange. [Fast] was never suspended. And she [will take] command of Fort Huachuca," said Karpinski, who was commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade until she received a letter of admonishment for her alleged leadership failures and was suspended from command. She is trying to get reinstated to her post.

Fast was aware of at least some of the Abu Ghraib activities of CIA personnel, a number of whom are being questioned about the abuses and at least one death, according to the writings of a civilian interrogator at Abu Ghraib, Joe Ryan, who worked for the Virginia-based contractor CACI International.

In a Web diary that is part of a court exhibit filed by Iraqis who claim they were abused at the prison, [Joe] Ryan wrote: "The CIA has proven once again they are incompetent boobs. ... They have General Fast's ire. They cannot set foot on Abu Ghurayb without her expressed permission."

Fast arrived in Baghdad late last summer to become intelligence chief for the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez. How she ran intelligence operations is among the questions of an Army investigation led by Lt. Gen. Anthony R. Jones, whose equivalent rank allows him to question Sanchez.
(via Baltimore Sun)

So Fast was the "conduit," eh? So did "our" government's video of the shrieking boys being raped pass through her hands? And, if so, who did she pass it to?

Follow the bytes!

NOTE The A1 Project has more on Barbara Fast.

On the commmute home, I saw a guy come through the station to catch a train, carrying a "John Kerry for President" sign. Maybe there is hope! It's little events like this... This is, in fact, the first time in my life that I've ever seen such a thing, and I've been through a lot of elections. Next thing: "Proud liberal" T-Shirts....

I don't know that I've ever read the Pittsburg Post-Gazette's Tony Norman before, but I am definitely a convert now. I love the smell of smackdown in the morning.

Let's hope that Democratic Party apparatchiks have more intestinal fortitude than Unilever NV, the Dutch conglomerate that just dropped Whoopi Goldberg as the pitchwoman for its chalky-tasting Slim-Fast diet drink.

For days, every archconservative with a bully pulpit has weighed in with rabid denunciations of Goldberg, Hollywood liberals and the Kerry-Edwards ticket. The attempt to smear the Democratic challengers as "immoral" because they grinned nervously through Whoopi's performance is a transparently cynical exercise in political hypocrisy.

How many Republican candidates stomped out of GOP fund-raisers when the Clintons were the butt of vulgar jokes? Rush Limbaugh and his imitators could fill phone books with lascivious jokes about Bill and Monica.

That's why their foaming at the mouth over a tasteless stand-up act is pure demagoguery. Even so, Slim-Fast dropped Whoopi's endorsement deal faster than the comic dropped pounds as soon as the word "boycott" appeared.


The Democrats knew when they recruited her that Whoopi Goldberg wasn't going to go along with the "divine right of kings" mentality that paralyzes so much of the mainstream media.

Thank goodness Lenny Bruce is dead. Even he would have a hard time dealing with the pornography of false outrage.

You go, Mr. Norman.

To Dick "Dick" Cheney:

So, Mr. Vice President, who's your favorite Beatle?

I have long since forgotten who first turned me on to Real Live Preacher, probably Melanie over at Bump in the Beltway. You'll find links to the Preach around the more eclectic sites in Left Coast Blogland, run by saner folks than I am who occasionally think about things other than politics.

Just for the hell of it give the guy a read if you need a break sometime. It would also help make sense of this particular clip if you looked at the picture of the billboard he mentions:

We Texans have always had a strange attraction to propane. I've always thought it was perfect that Hank Hill sells it. The folks who created "King of the Hill" know something about Texans.

But until I saw this billboard I had not considered the spiritual value of the compressed, flammable gasses. Comfort for the soul? Perhaps we're witnessing the birth of another major religion. If so, the Propanites are going to be MAJOR competition. I mean, preachers have always been full of hot air, but even my best sermons can't light your grill.

I hope they're at least monotheists. If we're having an interfaith dialogue, I don't think it will be fair if they get extra time to talk about their other gods - butane, methane, and natural gas. I pray they don't wear turbans, cause that's a shootin offense in some rural Texas counties these days.

Preacher is one of those "good Christians" we (sometimes) remember to cite when we've been ranting about the fundie sorts who have hijacked the microphone lately. Not to mention I would give up several body parts to write half as well as he does.

Remember when the WhiteWashHouse used to dump bad news late on Friday afternoons, in hopes it would be too late for the evening network newscasts, picked up by papers on Saturday which nobody reads, then be Old News by Sunday?

Notice how they have pretty much quit doing that since we let it be known we were onto them? (I would like to claim that this was a Triumph of the Blogotopians but in fact the late lamented Aaron Sorkin-written "West Wing"* used the device in quite a number of episodes.)

But since they've gotten away from the Friday News Dump they're even more devious about putting bad news out in inconspicuous ways. I call it the Sabbath Strategy: from sundown Friday to noon Sunday seem to be the new times to watch.

So any bets on what breaks this weekend? My money's on the screaming boys of Abu Ghraib (see also Sadly,No!'s superb translation link of the original German reports on this atrocity.) This has been out in Europe for a week now, presumably all the American media people currently on vacation over there will hear about it and deign to give us a report any day now.

Readers?

(*No, Sorkin isn't dead, and "West Wing" isn't either, but it just hasn't been the same since they split up.)

UPDATE: In case any of the links, particularly the ones to "Sadly, No!", don't work, Blogger/Blogspot has recently changed their posting formatting and it is giving me fits.  I have tried fixing them three times now, and if this one doesn't work I am going to crawl through the monitor, squeeze down through the phone lines,  pop back into realspace inside Blogger HQ with a pair of wire cutters and punish the bastards.

Our second installment of today's WhiteHouseBriefing is rude and impolite.

Since the subject of the rudeness is Karl "Grub" Rove we figured (1) you wouldn't mind but still (2) would just as soon not see it pop up in your face without warning.

So go here and look at the picture. Then make up a caption for it and send it to

froomkin@washingtonpost.com

Froom requests "Please include your full name and your home town, or I won't be able to use your entry."

Of course, if your particular entry is profane enough to be up to our usual standards, such that it would not be suitable for use in a high-class news dispensarium like the Washington Post anyway, skip sending it to Froom and just leave it in comments.

I think our resident farmer could probably have some fun with this too. We'll just have to wait and see...

Today's Froomkin column is so damn good I have to link to its various parts separately. For starters, he generously links to another WaPo writer's story on a soon-to-be-hot book:

If you've never dropped the word "dubyavirus" into casual conversation, urged that an official be "ashcrofted" or commented upon "The Cheney Effect," then you haven't seen the future, at least the future according to McSweeney's.

The ever-expanding genre of anti-Bush books has now entered the reference field. Coming in August from McSweeney's, the publishing house founded by author-activist Dave Eggers, is "The Future Dictionary of America," a Utopian tome set "sometime" beyond the present.

Contributors include Eggers, Stephen King, Kurt Vonnegut, Jonathan Franzen, Wendy Wasserstein and more than 100 others. Proceeds will be donated to "groups working for the public good in the 2004 election."

Author T.C. Boyle offers several definitions of "environment," including "a conceptual space, like the airspace over Iraq, which will create a sucking void if not filled to repleteness with high explosives."

Attorney General John Ashcroft inspired novelist Robert Coover to coin "ashcrofted," when one is "removed from or disqualified for public office on grounds of religious delusions."

Joyce Carol Oates presents "dark natter," which she labels "continuous chatter of an ominous sort."

Cartoonist Art Spiegelman contributes "ralphnadir," which is "the lowest point in any process," so low that the process must be changed.

Some examples:

-"The ralphnadir of America's unrepresentative two-party system led to the establishment, in 2012, of our current proportional allnite-party system."

For your ordering convenience (pre-ordering in this case as they still have it as "not released yet") a link to Amazon.com. Yeah, the price is kinda awful but you've got some big names here (Vonnegut, Stephen King, etc.) and it comes with a music CD, so at least there's a fair amount of bang for your bux.

Now, that's a surprise! (Actually, the real surprise is that the story made page A8 of the World's Greatest Newspaper (not!) instead of A18:

The Congressional investigation into the abuse of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison has virtually ground to halt, as a senior Senate Republican said Thursday that no new hearings would be held on the matter until this fall at the earliest.
(via the Fabulous Invalid, the Not-The-Pulitzer-Heavy-Los-Angeles Times)

Gee. I wonder why? The House, as expected, gave The Fog Machine (back) a free pass, leaving matters up to the Senate Armed Services Committee and John Warner. Watch the handwringing:

On Thursday, Mr. Warner said he would hold off calling any more witnesses until several criminal prosecutions and seven pending Pentagon inquiries were completed.

"We're not in a position to try to have an independent investigation at this point," Mr. Warner told reporters after senators received a classified briefing on Thursday on Red Cross reports about detention operations at American-run prisons in Iraq. "There are so many ongoing investigations going on, we cannot in any way jeopardize the right of individuals being investigated."

Other factors also are behind the delay: the calendar, the preferences of some of Mr. Warner's Republican colleagues and the pace of the military investigations, many of which are behind schedule. All seem to be conspiring to thwart his desire to hold hearings on the matter.

And poor old John Warner is helpless in the face of it all. Damn pitiful. Always nice to see Republicans put their hold on power above restoring the honor of the military by cleansing it of torturers. Moral clarity, don't you know.

At the briefing on Thursday, the Pentagon also provided senators with updated figures on investigations of the death or abuse of Iraqi prisoners. The military has opened 41 death investigations; 15 are still pending. Of the 135 inquiries into other abuses, 54 are still pending.

Gee. I wonder if any of the investigations feature videos of screaming boys being raped.

One can only hope that some actual news reporting gets done by that feisty weekly, The New Yorker. Mr. Hersh, you've seen the tapes. Why not release them? And say—who in the Bush administration has seen the rape vidoes? Anyone in the WhiteWash House? The RNC/CPA?

Or, in this case, oil meters.

This is one of those WaPo stories that starts out "He said, She said" but has the killer detail in the very last graf. Wait for it:

The Bush administration is withholding information from U.N.-sanctioned auditors examining more than $1 billion in contracts awarded to Halliburton Co. and other companies in Iraq without competitive bidding, the head of the international auditing board said Thursday.

The dispute comes as the board released an initial audit by the accounting firm KPMG on Thursday that sharply criticized the U.S.-led coalition's management of billions of dollars in Iraqi oil revenue.

KPMG outlined a series of other shortcomings, including the coalition's failure to install meters on Iraq's Persian Gulf export loading platforms, making it impossible to determine how much oil Iraq was exporting.
(via WaPo)

Wow! Free oil! I wonder where it all went? Hey, freedom's untidy!

Look out, Kid—it's something you did...

Two guys from the UK sent in an email letting us know that they will be roaring across the Homeland begining Friday July, 16th. Destination: Boston and the Democratic Convention on July 26. See for yourself:

"If anyone told you they were going to get to Boston by flying to San Francisco and driving cross country the 4000 miles through 17 states to get there, you would say they were mad, right?

Well, that's what we are going to do. Over 11 days we will be driving through some of the key battlegrounds of the 2004 Presidential Election, stopping off to ask people what they think of John Kerry and finding out about local level campaigning, US-style."

READ MORE ABOUT IT HERE: Kerry Road Trip




I think this is a good idea. I like roadtrips myself and have been on an ungodly number of 'em. Although, I gotta tell ya, in this case, at least these days, I'd be a little wary of providing an online pre lift-off route map of the journey. For various reasons. Most of which are scary and dripping with paranoia. But!, hey, anyway, as I recall you can pretty much drive from Winnemucca to Wells without even having to navigate the stupid road. Just put the damned vehicle in cruise control, nod off, and hurdle through the dried up weeds and rocks for 150 miles. Don't worry, no one will notice. Mainly because there isn't anyone out there. But, in the event anyone asks any questions, just tell em you're smuggling jars of freeze dried Central American stimulants into Salt Lake, or delivering handguns and a bundle of mysterious golden plates to a polygamy cult located along the North Fork Virgin River just South of the Dixie National Forest. Or, tell them that you've just escaped from a weird government experiment on the Nellis Air Force Range and are searching for your real parents. Tell them you're the spawn of Pam Dawber! Any of those will get you through Nevada. Utah is another story, especially if your smuggling freeze dried stimulants.

Uhm..., one other suggestion for HD and MD from the UK. Add a comments feature to you're blog. That way an ungodly number of weirdos can stalk you all the way across the country. :-)

Also included at the Kerry Road Trip site is a "list" of "some of the best Road Movies, provided, somewhat weirdly, by the US Department of Transportation." So check that out.

Personally my favorite road trip movie is the raucous cult classic "Smokin' Rubber Dope Run" starring Jonah and Lucianne Goldberg. I've seen it 52 times and I never tire of it. I won't tell you what happens but there is a big shoot em up at a bait shop in Arkansas and a slanderous gang bang and tiki torchlit beach brawl at Anne Coulter's summer house near Port Chester. Fun for the whole family.




So, rent that romantic troubled loner thriller on DVD. And, support these guys from the UK as they careen their way across the American dream. Whatever that is.

This post was made possible in part with contributions from the MJS "Next Miles" Project and Farmtoons Productions.

*

When does the full moon happen, anyhow? Soon? I'm tired of the crazies being so quiet. Action, that's what I want!

Jeb should have stuck with tubers and trigonometry:

From this morning's Palm Beach Post
 

TALLAHASSEE -- Denying felons the right to vote, a Civil War-era policy that critics say is rooted in Florida's racist past, could cost taxpayers millions of dollars, especially following a court ruling Wednesday that has civil rights groups cheering.

The First District Court of Appeal in Tallahassee ruled unanimously that the Florida Department of Corrections was not complying with a law that requires the state to help felons get their civil rights restored when they are about to leave prison.

The ruling essentially means that prison workers will have to offer a single-page application form and individual help to each of the 42,000 inmates who cycle out of state prisons every year.

"I think it could become a workload issue for the Department of Corrections," said Sterling Ivey, department spokesman.

Nash could not say how much the department spent to hire Joseph Klock, a founder of one of the state's most prestigious law firms and an ardent donor to Republican candidates [to argue the state's side of the case]. The bill is believed to exceed $100,000.

A spokeswoman for Attorney General Charlie Crist said Wednesday that a long-standing policy prohibits his office from defending the state in open records challenges because his office includes a public records division.

When most people decide to re-fight the Civil War they join a reenactment group and buy an itchy wool uniform. Jeb and his 1st Felonious Fighting Floridians Regiment legislative buddies do it on the state's dime instead, and work in graft for Republican donors to boot. YEEE-haw.

It looks like there are two parts to the WhiteWash House cover story to protect Bush from being held accountable for the Iraq WMD fiasco.

Part one is that Bush was given bad information: the one page memo (back) that, for some crazy reason, suppressed any evidence Bush didn't want to hear.

Part two supplies the crazy reason: The intelligence agencies that gave Bush his information were engaged in "groupthink." Well, how plausible is part two? Psychologist Robert Jervis of Columbia answers "Not very." Here's his reasoning:

In an unusual foray into psychological diagnostics, the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded Friday that CIA analysts had succumbed to what it called a "groupthink" dynamic. According to the committee's report, the analysts suffered from a "collective presumption" that Iraq had acquired weapons of mass destruction and they blithely ignored any evidence to the contrary.

But was that indeed what happened? "Groupthink" -- identified in the early 1970s by the late Yale psychologist Irving Janis -- refers to a process by which conformity grows out of deliberations in small groups. It can indeed be quite powerful. The way Janis explained it, groupthink operates when individuals work closely together over a sustained period. It isn't merely that members of the group come to think alike but that they come to overvalue the harmonious functioning of the group. In their eagerness to reach consensus, they become inhibited from questioning established assumptions or from raising questions that might disturb their colleagues and friends.

But although groupthink has played a part in past foreign policy decisions, it does not appear to explain the CIA's current intelligence failures, despite the contention of the Senate committee. First of all, intelligence gathering is work done by individuals, [not groups. And] from what I have seen of them, intelligence analysts tend to be highly individualistic, if not intellectually combative. They have selected the career of an analyst rather than a more public and people-oriented career in part because they like to work on their own.

There are, of course, some larger group meetings where members of the broader intelligence community convene. And as in any such group situations, there will be times when individuals shape the views they bring in anticipation of what they think will appeal to the other attendees.

But these meetings are not likely to be susceptible to groupthink. Many of them are quite large, which precludes the formation of close ties among participants. Indeed, many of the meetings are ad hoc, with different people participating at different times. Although the members probably know one another, the stability required for groupthink is rarely present.

Finally, many intelligence officials these days -- unlike top political leaders -- are on guard against groupthink.

It appears that another dynamic was at work in this case. Intelligence officials, like the rest of us, hesitate to tell their bosses what they do not want to hear -- and may even, on occasion, convince themselves that alternative views are groundless. The Bush administration made it clear early on that it was seeking to prove the existence of WMD in Iraq -- not disprove it. The intelligence community was under pressure to deliver that evidence.

There are lots of ways political psychology can help explain what went wrong and how intelligence could be done better, but groupthink was not the main problem in this case.
(via Dodge City (!) Daily Globe)

Case closed.

Let's look at one portion of Jervis's reasoning again:

[Groupthink is a] process by which conformity grows out of deliberations in small groups. It can indeed be quite powerful. The way Janis explained it, groupthink operates when individuals work closely together over a sustained period. It isn't merely that members of the group come to think alike but that they come to overvalue the harmonious functioning of the group.

As we've seen, the intelligence community isn't a candidate for groupthink. But I can think of one small group that is: Bush, Condi, Rummy, Wolfie, and the rest of the neocons and assorted sycophants.

As usual with Republicans, they project onto others the sins that they themselves commit, in overplus. Winger projection!

So how plausible is the latest cover story? The one that says Bush isn't really responsible for the WMD fiasco because He went to war on the basis of a one-page memo that didn't have any, you know, nuance in it?

On one, level, really plausible. After all, Bush refused clemency to over 57 Texas death-row inmates on the basis of sloppy, one-page memos, and is there really all that much difference between 57 and 800 or so? (And as for the Iraqis, hey, who's counting?)

But is it really plausible that the entire administration—that vast congereries over which Inerrant Boy, The Chosen One, has dominion—didn't do their homework either? Thomas Oliphant doesn't think so:

.
To absolve Bush of disqualifying responsibility for this true scandal, this is what you have to believe.

You have to believe that in processing all of this, Bush never bothered to look beyond the summary or to inquire in depth whether it was supported. You then have to believe that Condoleezza Rice never had her large national security staff in the White House take a long look at the backup material on Bush's behalf.
.
You have to believe that in getting ready for a war, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his huge operation never snuck a peek, either.
.
You have to believe that Vice President Dick Cheney - he of the long resumé and rich experience, not to mention his status as prime mover behind the idea of hasty, nearly unilateral invasion - never bothered to see if his extreme statements about the "threat" from Iraq were supportable. You have to believe that his many personal visits to the CIA were simply to ask questions, not influence answers.
.
And you have to believe that before he went to the United Nations to make Bush's "case" just before the war - with George Tenet, the director of central intelligence - Secretary of State Colin Powell's own visits to the CIA never once turned up the hedging, contradictory information that the Senate committee found by the bucketful.
.
(via International Herald Trib)

Well, unless they were all in it together, of course. All the "principals." Kind of like a gang of true believers, know what I mean? Gee, that's not all that hard to believe, is it?

Much worse is yet to come. Unless, of course, Bush succeeds in stonewalling. Kos via Atrios, Seymour Hersh at the ACLU 2004 conference:

[HERSH] Some of the worse that happened that you don't know about, ok. Videos, there are women there. The women were passing messages saying "Please come and kill me, because of what's happened". Basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys/children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. The worst about all of them is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has.

The video is here.

Gee, I thought Rummy stopped all email communication out of Iraq. How'd this get out, anyhow?

Who would have thought that a President who tortured small animals as a child would grow up to be the Torturer-In-Chief? Tell me it's not a great country....

Proving once again how much more attention things get once they are printed in the New York Times, the "Should Bush dump Cheney from the ticket?" talk is bubbling up again like residue from New Jersey landfills after their recent flood problems.

We must counter this, Correntians! Cheney is our friend. As Bush flounders and flails in the swirling waters of rising electoral loathing, Cheney is the anvil we throw to his rescue.

Warm up with a couple of giggles:

(via Minneapolis Star-Tribune)

On C-SPAN [in an interview to be broadcast Sunday], Cheney was asked if he could envision any circumstances in which he would step aside. ``Well, no, I can't. If I thought that were appropriate, I certainly would. But he's made it very clear that he wants me to run again. The way I got here in the first place was that he persuaded me four years ago that I was the man he wanted in that post, not just as a candidate, but as somebody to be part of the governing team. He's been very clear he doesn't want to break up the team.''

Of course we remember the real story on this, right? Not that we would want to make fun of an old, sick man with a history of circulatory problems of the sort that often lead to cognitive dysfunction and memory loss.

At any rate, JFK did his part for the Cheney Love! cause this morning:

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry said today that if Bush replaces Cheney, it will be the latest in a string of broken promises.

``It will mean that the president's word once again doesn't mean anything, that he himself is the flip-flopper of all flip-floppers because he's been touting how important Dick Cheney is,'' Kerry told broadcaster Don Imus. ``The fact is that George Bush would be declaring an act of desperation, a sudden move that goes contrary to everything he's said.''

While this almost guarantees Cheney will tell Bush that he (Bush) has decided to keep him (Cheney) on the ticket, we must still do our part. I offer this as a starter until MJS gets here with better lyrics and, hopefully, a pitch pipe:

We love you Cheney-poo, we doooo!
We don't love anyone, as much as yooooo!
When you're not near us, we're bluuuuuu!
Mis-Ter Vice-Fuck-Yourself, we luuuuuv yoooooo!

And remember, this is supposed to be the smarter Bush brother. Jebbie Poo might want to take a page from Georgie Boy's policy noted yesterday of only taking simple, prepared questions from carefully pre-screened audiences:

(via AJC)

ORLANDO, Fla. — Florida school officials hit the books after Gov. Jeb Bush was stumped by a math problem that reportedly was on the state's standardized test for high school students.

Their answer: The question isn't on the test.

Bush was stymied by the problem last week while visiting a high school. A teenager asked the governor a question about triangles that she said was taken from the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, which Bush has championed.

But a state researcher later determined the question would not be permitted on the exam because the test does not cover trigonometry.

Education Commissioner Jim Horne sent a letter this week to nine Florida newspapers, informing them of the findings.

Officials said the purpose of the efforts wasn't to save face for the governor — but merely to set the record straight on what is on the test.

Bush took the question from 18-year-old Luana Marques, who asked, "What are the angles on a three-four-five triangle?" The numbers refer to the proportions of the sides of such triangles.

Bush, hemming a bit, answered "125, 90, and whatever remains on 180."

Bush and Marques both gave wrong answers. The correct answer was 90 degrees, 53.1 degrees and 36.9 degrees.

The story generated letters to the editor, columns and editorials in the state's newspapers either criticizing the exam or defending Bush for not knowing the answer. Marques later said she meant the question as a joke.

"People reported it inaccurately that it was a question on the test and then it kind of cascades out," the governor told reporters Wednesday in Tallahassee.

"125 plus 90, and whatever remains on 180". Never mind that that works out to negative 35, just contemplate that this is the guy in charge of counting the votes. But that doesn't count, does it, since it's not on the test?

Tom and Dick Smothers really did all this material a lot better, and thirty years ago. Maybe they can sue for plagiarism.

UPDATE: Comments indicate Alert Readers feel I am making fun of Jebbie Poo here for not being able to do trig problems in his head. While always delighted to make fun of any Bush on any grounds whatsoever, in fact this was not my angle (snicker, snort) in THIS particular case.

Rather, I was making fun of Jeb for his dedication to what are apparently deeply ingrained family traits:

(1) a complete inability to utter the phrase "I don't know" even when he doesn't, even when he couldn't reasonably be expected to know it, and would have gained sympathy by admitting he didn't know it;

(2) instead trying to bullshit his way through it

(3) and succeeding only in uttering a wrong answer to a far simpler math problem involving mere addition (125 + 90 is greater than, or less than, 180?)

(4) Then, when caught getting that one wrong too, trying to change the subject by deflecting the question to "whether or not this was actually on the test."

If the original triangle question HAD been on the test, and he was a kid TAKING that test, he wouldn't have gotten a second (or third or fourth) chance like that, now would he? Perhaps we need a No Governor Left Behind exam, and governors who fail it get "helped" by having their funding taken away.

At any rant, er I mean rate, I apologize for lack of clarity in the initial post.

David Cole of The Nation visits "The Thin Skin Zone."

[snip] But then I decided to go one step further: "It seems to me like the pot calling the kettle black, Bill, because I just sat here five minutes ago as you re-recorded the introduction to this show to take out a statement from the head of the 9/11 commission stating that there was no evidence of a link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11."

Apparently O'Reilly does not like being called "the pot." He exploded, repeatedly called me an "S.O.B." and assured me that he would cut my accusation from the interview when the show aired. He also said I would "never ever" be on his show again. At this point, I wasn't sure whether to take that as a threat or a promise. LINK [snip]

*

Sam Brownshirt, I mean Brownback!, oh golly jeepers sorry, of Kansas (the Over the Rainbow State), presented himself for public inspection and scrutiny and general interrogation last evening (July 14). Appearing on CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight, which, by the way, dear readers and gentle souls, has become the only program CNN still produces that is actually worth watching. At least it is if you really don't give a flying fuck-me-running hot gawd-damned who that Prince what's his fucking name from England went rollerskating with last weekend or what some glassy eyed pampered dullard like Paula Zahn has to say about the Six Pack Twin's upcoming Vanity Fair debutante photo op - slash - dress me up like a Bourbon court princess makeover moment. And other cosmetic counter culture promo-drivel-driven news claptrap.

Anyway. The CNN/Dobb's segment featuring Brownback concerned that afternoon's attempts by certain members of the Republican Senate's Dominionist/Christian Reconstructionist Wing to prevent scary blackamoors from marryin' da white women! Because, you know, the sacred institution of marriage and Christianity and Western Civilization itself would implode straightaway should such horrors and crimes against God and country and capitalism proceed! What will we tell the children!

Oh, no wait, that was another similar crusade some years back. The Brownshirt's (I mean Brownback's) have apparently given up on the anti-miscegenation issue and have since moved on to more fer-tile easily salable bugga-boos. Rather, this time 'round, the scary looming diabolical stranger is the gay marriage interloper. And not even the gay marriage interloper directly, in this specific case, but rather the need for a proper whoopin' of the US Constitution itself; in order to ensure a springboard for future impositions of specific prohibitions and whoopins' on fiendish diabolical interloper schemes which no doubt threaten to manifest themselves, at some point, in some ways, down the wandering back road of the American experiment.

Hey, ya know, ya just can't keep a good Bible thumper beatin' up on diabolical interloper on a back road when there's a full whole bloomed Constitution out there just askin' for a high holy whoopin'.

So. Senator Brownback of the Cottonwood State appeared on CNN opposite Senator Barbara Boxer (of the Eureka State) and made some grunting noises that sounded exactly like this:

...you're talking about the fundamental institution around which we build families in this country. And you're talking about a fundamental institution that's been under attack for nearly 40 years and in a lot of difficulty. And you're talking about a fundamental institution that you've seen in other countries that have engaged in same sex unions has declined even further.

And so really what you're talking about is the children. Where's the optimal setting? And what can we do to encourage that family and that mother and father bonded together for life in a low conflict union that raises children that will be the next generation?

Children are raised in a lot of different settings nowadays. That's certainly the case. But we know the optimal place. We know the place we want to push for. And I think that's worthy of enshrining in the constitution with a simple statement that marriage in the United States is a union of a man and woman.

Oh my yes, "...bonded together for life in a low conflict union." Apparently Sen. Brownback hadn't read the "low conflict union" report out of Seattle (yesterday), which described a particular flaming enshrinement of fatherly bonding togetherness to mother and child and all next generations or something awful like that. The one where some crazy bastard immolated his wife and children and self in some twisted "optimal place" everlasting. A gasoline soaked celebration of one man one woman matrimony forevermore. Ironic timing wasn't it? Likewise not much mention of the incident was reported by the optimal vibrating tines of CableTVNews-o-tainment. Not when there's a dead Tiger and an angry Tarzan running loose around the water cooler! Heck no. Even Larry King's weird interview with Jeffery Dahmer's spooky Bible thumping Dominionist "optimal" dad and semi-optimal step-mom didn't warrant repeating for the 4, 5, 6, 7th time. Not that Larry King or any one at CNN is picking up the drift here, but, do the rest of you detect a pattern?

And really, how long did it take for Senator Brownback to snatch "the children" from the sideline of his silly argument above, thrust them in front of his "optimal setting", and march 'em around as his ideological hostage. Big tough gas soaked guy that he is.

"Children are raised in a lot of different settings nowadays. That's certainly the case. But we know the optimal place. We know the place we want to push for."

Yeah, I bet you do Brownback. And I'll bet you and your pushy "We" people would douse the US Constitution in gasoline and light it up like a cheap smudgepot faggot if you thought it would get you one foot closer to whatever delusive "optimal place" you've invented for yourself and all the sorry bastards who I'm convinced will one day follow you into the ninth circle of hell.

Ok, everyone relax. I'm just kidding. LOL! I don't really wish for Lucifer to gnaw on Sam Brownbacks frozen skull in the extreme "optimal" outbacks of pandemonium. Not yet anyway. But, I would like to offer Sam some old timey traditional American family value advice from the Great State of Kansas circa 1927. From a Hotel Kansan ("The Pride of Topeka"), guest welcome-flyer:

We may never see you, never get to know you, but just the same, we want you to feel that this is a HUMAN HOUSE, and not a soulless institution.

Human beings care for you here, make the bed and sweep the room, answer your telephone, run your errands, cook and serve your food. We keep a human being at the desk and a human being carries your valise. They are all made of flesh and blood, as you are; they have their interests, likes and dislikes, ambitions, dreams and disappointments, just as you have.

We are not going to intrude upon you, for one of the joys of being in a hotel is that you can be left alone.

May you rest well, "full of sweet sleep and dreams from head to feet!"

May you be healthy under this roof, and no evil befall your body or mind!

May every letter, telegram or telephone call you receive be of a kind to make you happier.

We are all travelers from the port of birth to the port of death, wanderers between the two eternities - for a little space you lodge with us - and we wish to put these good thoughts upon you - so God keep you, stranger, and bring you your heart's desire!

And when you go away, leave for this hotel a bit of a grateful feeling.

Honest, I didn't make that up. Not one word of it. I wish I did. Some anonymous person or persons composing hotel hello welcome handouts wrote that seventy seven years ago (thereabouts) and understood more about living free than a thousand Sam Brownbacks and his high and mighty holy-rolling horsemen of sanctimonious and apocryphal doom-channeling horseshit could ever fathom. Let alone scribble into the margins of the US Constitution. Hey! Who needs revealed religion and all that ornery crap when ya got a good hotel looking after you. Pretty simple if ya ask me.

Viva "The Pride of Topeka!" Whoever and wherever you may now be. "May you rest well, 'full of sweet sleep and dreams from head to feet!'"

*

Okay, I'll give 'em this: what we have here is a good summary of events. But there is virtually not one single new thing (exception noted below) in this piece which has not been covered, extensively, in detail, and with supporting documentation, in blogs (most emphatically including this one; we've been what some might call obsessive on the issue) for months now.

(via NYT (I bet you already guessed that!))

Three years after Gov. Jeb Bush announced a new voting system that he called "a model for the rest of the nation," Florida is grappling with some of the same problems that threw the 2000 presidential election into chaos, as well as new ones that critics say could cause even more confusion this November.

In fairness (no snickering there!), I will admit there was a mention of one detail I at least had not heard before:

The election reform coalition and other groups have also expressed concerns about a new policy on provisional ballots, used by Floridians if poll workers cannot verify their registration on the spot. The Legislature decided that provisional ballots cast outside a voter's home precinct can be thrown out, which voting-rights groups call unfair.

And just to get snarky again, this is the LAST paragraph of a two-page article. Yo! It's called burying the lead, dimwit NYT editors. Disputes about "home precincts" cause, in my experience, something like 99.9 percent of the problems which would cause provisional ballots to be called for. An honorable system would allow the vote to be cast, the correct precinct to be determined at the courthouse on the basis of the voter's ID, and the vote counted there. But this is Florida we're talking about, so the word "honorable" is hardly applicable.

Back in the day, before Roe v Wade, Florynce Kennedy summed it up well: "If only men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament."

It's the day of life and death in the fight against AIDS right now, not that it hasn't been for twenty years, and that line came back to me when reading this. News Flash! BushCo officials think that if you repeat a lie enough times it will somehow come true!

(via Reuters via WaPo)

The United States fought back Wednesday against widespread attacks on its AIDS policies, insisting it is leading the fight against the killer epidemic and spending more money on it than the rest of the world combined.

But it rejected a plea from U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to inject $1 billion a year into a global AIDS fund.

"It's not going to happen," U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator Randall Tobias told a small group of reporters at the 15th International AIDS Conference in Bangkok.

Tobias, the former chairman and chief executive of U.S. pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, said the president's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief would buy safe and effective drugs from the cheapest source of supply.

Critics fear the requirement for FDA approval is a tactic to protect patented drug brands from U.S. pharmaceutical companies from cheap generic competitors.

Ya think??

God these people make me sick.

...if the only alternative is losing weight by use of this company's overpriced junk.

(via abcnews.go.com)

July 14, 2004 — NEW YORK (Reuters) - Comedian Whoopi Goldberg will no longer appear in ads for diet aid maker Slim-Fast following her lewd riff on President Bush's name at a fund-raiser last week, the company said on Wednesday.

Florida-based Slim-Fast said it was "disappointed" in Goldberg's remarks at last Thursday's $7.5 million star-studded fund-raiser at Radio City Music Hall in New York.

You know these products are bogus anyway, right? Eat mindfully and move around a little more, yada yada, or just get happy in your body. Send money formerly spent on Slim-Fast to Kerry.

And I don't have a link but a commenter over at Atrios, who claimed to have been at this fundraiser, said (paraphrased) "Whoopie's comments were PG-13 at worst. She didn't use ANY of the "seven dirty words you can't say on TV" unless you consider Bush, of itself, a dirty word."

Best line of the day:

President Bush should remember that a trial lawyer helped make him president. (back)

Let's hope someone in the Kerry camp reads that and feeds it up the chain to Edwards. I'd love to see him, well, Cheney Cheny.

Just don't ask him anything hard:

Welcome to "Ask the President," the latest wrinkle in Bush's efforts to project himself to voters as he ended a two-day campaign in the upper Midwest.

The format is nothing like the high-pressured, prime-time news conferences in the East Room of the White House. Yet as the relaxed, often jocular give-and-take here showed today, the approach affords Bush ample opportunity to tackle an array of issues — usually by falling back on his familiar talking points, but without fear of being interrupted or subjected to pointed follow-up interrogation.
(via LA Tims)

Isn't the real story here something that could be put a little less gently than this story puts it?

Bush is absolutely unwilling to make a campaign appearance unless he is surrounded, 100%, by supporters.

What does that tell us about the courage of the man?

And what does it tell us about how He would rule for the next four years?

Because Bush is planning to gut OT protection:

The Economic Policy Institute's report estimated that among those who would lose overtime protection were nearly 2 million administrative workers who can be classified as "team leaders" and 920,000 workers who can be reclassified as a "learned professional" even though they do not have college degrees.

The EPI study also said 1.4 million workers who, because of the rules changes, can be reclassified as executives will lose overtime pay, as will an estimated 130,000 chefs and cooks, 160,000 financial service workers and 117,000 teachers and computer programmers.
(via AP)

"Learned professionals" but without a degree. Remind you of anything? Like "ketchup is a vegetable"?

Of course, the Republicans really think they've got a winner on their hands with this one—somuch so that they won't take it up 'til after the Democratic convention.

A touch of sentiment from Lambert...

To the tune of, "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas."

They're beginning to look a lot like Fascists
Ev'rywhere you go
Take a look in the Pentagon,
infested with neocons
With culture wars and media whores aglow

They're beginning to look a lot like Fascists
Toys for ev'ry war
But the prettiest sight to see
is the brownshirt that will be
At your own front door

A pair of hopalong boots and a pistol that shoots
Is the wish of Rummy and Dick
Pols that will talk but not walk the walk
Are the hope of Rove and the SICs
While Jebbie wires up Florida for the fix

They're beginning to look a lot like Fascists
Soon the guns will start
And the thing that will make them shoot
Is the stamp of the Bush jackboot
Right within your heart

Of course, there are many more verses. Readers?

NOTE Alert reader MJS, if you want to perfect this, by all means, take it away!

The Atlanta paper has a very popular section known as "The Vent" which consists of what are essentially micro-letters to the editor. They can be sent by email but the person who picks them (known as "The Vent Guy," anonymity being important in this job for the sake of avoiding death threats) selects for local relevance along with humor when possible. These are from today's edition, with a few on non-political topics (HMO's, traffic and insect problems) omitted. Okay, one driving-related item left in because it's funny:

(via Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

The Republicans don't want the FBI to know whether I buy assault weapons, but they do want them to know which books I check out of the library. I guess the pen is still mightier than the sword.

Life Lesson No. 5,622: When a law enforcement officer says to you, "No one goes through mah town that fast," don't respond with "Sherman did."

Forget winning the Cold War. Ronald Reagan's real legacy was that he took the guilt out of being affluent. No one had to worry about sharing anymore.

John Kerry thinks that by picking a Southerner for VP, he will automatically pick up part of the South. But being a Southerner does not cancel out Edwards being one of the top five liberal senators.

If many more of President Bush's buddies become convicted felons who can't vote, it could make the difference in a very close election.

OK, I finally thought of one accomplishment by Dubya. He's made his dad look like a great president and world leader.

Kerry and Edwards kind of remind me of Batman and Robin. Bush and Cheney remind me of Pinky and the Brain.

President Bush should remember that a trial lawyer helped make him president.

See? I left in one anti-Edwards comment too. Just to prove we're fair and balanced here. But even that one is pretty weak, particularly compared to the last item. Bush is in more trouble than he knows in the South.

Gee, Bush just keeps having people arrested for thought-crime, doesn't he? (back and here and here)

Here's the latest:

It was a tightly controlled event staffed by dozens of volunteers with laminated badges. The Secret Service set up metal detectors and had mug shots of local anti-Bush activists Joel Kilgour and Joel Sipress.

He was briefly heckled by one man, who shouted "Shame on you" and was quickly led away by police.
(via the Duluth Tribune)

Why does Bush hate our freedoms?

NOTE The text of the first amendment is here.

Little Babs was such a sense of impunity! A Manhattan hostess writes:

Fifteen minutes later, I step outside to make sure the entrance is swept, and there I see Barbara [Bush] bent over, hands on her knees, out on the sidewalk. "Are you all right?" I ask. Please, I think, don't let me see her throw up.

She spits on the pavement. "Yeah, I just needed some fresh air," she says. She stands and I see her forehead is damp with sweat. It must be 20 degrees out, and windy. I want to go back into the warm restaurant, but I stay with her.

I massage her back for a moment. Finally she lets out a loud burp, mumbles, "Excuse me" and returns inside.
(via NY Times)

Frankly, at this point, I think the whole country needs a little fresh air.

And maybe an "Excuse me" or two, as well.

"Excuse me" for the WMD lies....

"Excuse me" for trampling on the Bill of Rights....

"Excuse me" for pushing a Constitutional Amendment just to fluff the base....

The list could go on.

"Burp", indeed.

Now I am not claiming God's copyright attorney is named Art. But the Almighty might want, in reverse of the usual order of things, to take a tip from BushCo folks and lawyer up. I think He's got a hell of a case v. a certain ex-judge:

(via the Alabama news summary)

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) -- Former Chief Justice Roy Moore told Justice Gorman Houston that Houston was damned to hell for "covering God" when Houston removed Moore's Ten Commandments monument from public display in Alabama's judicial building, Houston said.

Moore denied making the comment.

That's not even the fun part, although St. Roy might want to take a break from Ten-Commandmenting long enough to read the line about "judgement is mine, sayeth the Lord." However, just in case you thought damning somebody to eternal torment was a tad presumptuous, getta loada THIS:

Speaking to a civic club Tuesday, Houston said he last talked to Moore at 6:54 a.m. on Aug. 21, 2003, when Houston was in his office and Moore was at home.

"Roy told me in that four-minute conversation that I was damned to hell, that there was nothing I could ever do to change that, because I was covering God," said Houston. "I was speechless."

When he last talked to Moore, Houston said, the only thing he could think about was the time two years earlier, on Aug. 1, 2001, when the court building's manager took him to see Moore's monument before it had been unveiled. He said the monument was covered with a cloth and tied with a cord.

"I did not remove the cloth. However, I held up the bottom of the cloth and the first thing I saw, carved into the monument, was `Copyright, 2001, Roy S. Moore,'" Houston said.

I will give serious thought to abandoning my lifelong agnosticism as soon as "Judge" Moore is smitten with lightning, or boils, or some other suitably Old Testamentish affliction, preferably in as public a venue as possible. Reader suggestions on additional punishments--preferably with a Biblical connection--cordially invited.

Indeed.

Just asking.

Don't you love the Republicans? I do. They dream the impossible dream!

First, we have Dick "Dick" Cheney dreaming an impossible anatomical dream: "Go fuck yourself!"

And today, we have Tom "Don't call me Frenchy!" DéLay's media rent-boy dreaming an impossible conceptual dream—"caricature assassination"...

How does one assassinate a caricature? I can't quite get it straight in my mind...

I like to think the Republicans aren't tracking too well right now because... Well, because when they dream they wake up screaming....

Night, all ...

It's always the coverup that kills you, right? Only one day, and the Republican CYA CIA strategy of blaming the Iraq WMD fiasco 100% on the CIA, and 0% on Inerrant Boy is starting to fall apart:

The White House and the Central Intelligence Agency have refused to give the Senate Intelligence Committee a one-page summary of prewar intelligence in Iraq prepared for President Bush that contains few of the qualifiers and none of the dissents spelled out in longer intelligence reviews, according to Congressional officials.

So, they gave Him the black and white, "don't do nuance" view that they knew He wanted to hear, right?

Senate Democrats claim that the document could help clear up exactly what intelligence agencies told Mr. Bush about Iraq's illicit weapons. The administration and the C.I.A. say the White House is protected by executive privilege, and Republicans on the committee dismissed the Democrats' argument that the summary was significant

They would. Gee, it's funny how everything that makes Bush look good is disclosed, and everything that makes Him look like what He is is suppressed, isn't it?

The review, prepared for President Bush in October 2002, summarized the findings of a classified, 90-page National Intelligence Estimate about Iraq's illicit weapons. Congressional officials said that notes taken by Senate staffers who were permitted to review the document show that it eliminated references to dissent within the government about the National Intelligence Estimate's conclusions.
(via Times)

Oh, and the "yet again" part?

Bush has a habit of making life-and-death decisions based on sloppy one-page memos written by his fluffers. As we wrote back in December:

Think! What about [current WhiteWash House Counsel and torture apologist] Alberto Gonzales pimping 56 easy kills for Bush in Texas, detailed in The Texas Clemency Memos? What kind of a man [Bush] signs a death warrant on the basis of "the most cursory briefings"?

It really is a question of character, isn't it? Fool me once....

Now that's the kind of headline I like to see!

Story here.

Of course, the question is what "respectable" means to a Republican, these days. Shameless?

I wonder what the problem could have been? Inadequate funding?

So I get to the Blogger Main Screen to Post Stuff On and see this little notice:

Scheduled Downtime
We are planning to have 2 hours of downtime tomorrow night, July 13, between 8p-10p (Pacific Time). Blogging should resume as normal after 10p.

Do please note that this is Blogger doing this, not Corrente. Whether this means the pages will be down completely, or whether it just means we won't be able to put up new and scintillating (or even stale and boring) material during this blackout is not specified. You know all that we do.

So if you come here during those hours and we're not home, don't be overly concerned. It's not Ashcroft's doing.

Yet.

And oh yeah, keep in mind that a lot of the sites you are accustomed to visiting also use Blogger: Atrios, Digby's Hullabaloo, Orcinus, Hoffmania, et numerous cetera, so they'll be in the same boat. Take this opportunity to expand your reading around the blogosphere. Just remember to come back afterwards!

Froomkin clarifies (and rocks).

The microfilm that was "inadvertently destroyed" is not the same as the microfilm that AP is suing to have released:

The microfilm that the Pentagon reported destroyed was housed at the Defense Finance and Accounting Service in Denver and consisted only of a few months of payroll records -- albeit some of them from during the hotly contested third quarter of 1972.

The Associated Press lawsuit that Tomlin filed is for the microfilm of Bush's entire personnel file from the Texas Air National Guard. Those records are in Austin.

Gee, I thought that "all" the Bush service records had already been released? That's what Bush promised, so it must have happened, right?

Tom "Don't call me Frenchy!" DéLay flak Jonathan Grella says:

"The last sign of a defeated and intellectually bankrupt party is a hate-filled strategy of caricature assassination,"
(via AP)

Indeed.

I still can't believe that battle has finally been joined. And we've all been working so hard for a year... Hey farmer, what's hardest to spread? Memes, or fertilizer? And make up your own jokes.

Anyhow, I keep reading little snide comments on Kerry's lackluster campaign, blah blah blah. Seems to me he's keeping his head down pretty successfully, and so far has avoided being Gored. He might not get more than one really good shot at Bush, and so he's maneuvering carefully.

On the one really big decision Kerry has had to make: Edwards. Hard to quarrel with that.

Ever wonder why Dear Leader is so often photographed in front of military people who are in full uniform, while JFK's veteran friends have to appear in scruffy old camo jackets? We have all noted Dear Leader's terrified petulance at the prospect of appearing before any audience thought likely to be less than properly reverential (like the NAACP for instance), and the corresponding fondness for "speeches" to groups in uniform. Turns out there are rules for such things.

(via defenselink.mil (note the ".mil" there, this is official):

American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, July 12, 2004 -- With election activity steadily picking up, defense officials remind members of the military and Defense Department civilians that they're subject to rules regulating their involvement in political activities....

Steve Epstein, director of the DoD General Counsel's Standards of Conduct Office said two sets of rules help protect the integrity of the political process: a DoD directive for active-duty service members and the Hatch Act for federal civilians. These rules keep the military out of partisan politics and ensure that the workplace remains politically neutral, he said....

Of all DoD employees, the men and women in uniform have the most restrictions regarding political activity, he explained.

For example, service members as well as government civilians can attend political meetings or rallies. Military members can attend only as spectators and not in uniform. They're not permitted to make public political speeches, serve in any official capacity in partisan groups, or participate in partisan political campaigns or conventions.

While the dos and don'ts concerning political activity may vary, Epstein said the basic rules hold true for all DoD workers. They can't use their position to influence or interfere with an election. And they can never engage in political activity on the job, in a government vehicle, or while wearing an official uniform.

Of course these rules don't apply to an "official presidential address," just to a "campaign speech." Since the Dear Leader's words are virtually identical at both, and the SCLM is not scrupulous about clarifying to viewers whether speeches are "official" or "political," some people might get the impression that uniformed service people love Dear Leader.

And speaking of the sanctity of marriage, heh heh heh ....

WARNING: Click on that link only if you enjoy sleazy British tabloids.

The numbers tell the story:

Americans who attend church one or more times a week indeed favored George W. Bush in 2000. But the Americans who don't — a clear majority — favored Al Gore. The vaunted "Christian right" is, demographically speaking, a stagnant pool: 17% of voters in 1996 and shrinking. The really dynamic voting bloc is made up of those who darken a church's doorstep once a year or less. In 1972, they were 18% of voters; in 1998, 30%. And they don't like Bush.
(via LA Times)

That's why they're so desperate, and willing to do anything.

FTF!

A long-overdue front page appearance for MJS, Poet Laureate of Regime Change in America:

(via back here in comments from "Naw, They'd Never Do THAT!")

How the Chimps Stole the Election!
(excerpt)

Every Blue down in Blueville
Liked elections, somewhat
But the Chimps who lived rightward of Blueville
DID NOT!

The chimps hated elections
The whole voting season
We all know why this is:
voters might use their reason!

+++

If the good residents of Whoville could not be deterred from celebrating a traditional holiday--though a great injustice had been done to them--what are we to tell our children: that Democracy turns tail and runs when attacked, that free elections cower and hide?

Is that what we'll tell little Cindy Lou Who, who was not more than two?

MEDDLING EDITOR'S NOTE: I took the liberty of fiddling with the scansion in Lines 3 and 7. Purists and compilers of Collected Works of MJS should click the link above, or scroll down about 2 posts to comments and get the original.

And we all thought they had put so much thought into it! Who knew?

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said there was "great interest" among Republicans for a simpler approach that would add only one line to the U.S. Constitution: "Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman."

Democrats rejected Frist's request to hold votes on both it and the original version that included another sentence: "Neither this Constitution, nor the constitution of any state, shall be construed to require that marriage or the legal incidence thereof be conferred upon any union other than the union of a man and a woman."

Proponents of the amendment said they included the second sentence to clarify that state legislatures - but not courts - could still establish laws recognizing civil unions and domestic partnerships between two people of the same sex.

No, proponents of the bill included that line to make sure gay marrieds couldn't get work benefits, or hospital visitation, or visitation rights, or adopt children. For heaven's sake.

Beware of Republicans bearing clarifications...

Cheryl Jacques, president of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest gay political organization, said the last-minute effort to get votes on two different versions reflected a lack of care in drafting the amendment.

"I think it is outrageous and frankly surreal that at the 11th hour in this debate, they are literally rewriting the Constitution on the back of a napkin," she said.
(via AP)

Good shot, Cheryl! But with Bush all in a muck sweat to fluff a few more thousand votes out of the base, what's a little ol' thing like our Constitution matter?

So it looks like I'm finally going to a Democratic Meetup tomorrow night since enough people finally signed up this month. (Davis-Kidd Bookstore cafe, Jackson Tennessee if yer in the vicinity.)

Listed on the agenda was a discussion of Michael's Pledge, Mr. Moore's suggestions for GOTV efforts. Most are the usual...carry a stack of registration forms around and sign people up, volunteer at Dem HQ for whatever scutwork needs doing, cut work or school on election day to drive people around, you know the routine.

Then we get to THIS little item:

Or get more creative. Offer a six-pack to anyone in the office who votes (make sure you're not working in cubicles full of Republicans!). Promise to have sex with a nonvoter - whatever it takes!

Now we're going to ignore the phrasing here--I am sure Michael means "have sex with somebody who doesn't usually vote as long as they DO vote on this occasion." Mike's a filmmaker, not an English teacher.

But to the question: Would you, to save your country, have sex with somebody to get them to vote?

Caveats: Those in committed relationships, pretend for the sake of discussion that you're not. Or that your partner(s) would love and admire you all the more for your willingness to make this sacrifice for your nation.

And oh yeah, this hypothetical person should be one with whom you would NOT just as soon have sex anyway, with or without electoral consequences. This is supposed to be a serious moral question, not an excuse for you to excercise your lascivious imagination. You can do that on your own time.

Readers?

Dam' gummint ennyway, innerferin' wit' ar rats. Oops, this isn't from some hick town in the South, it's from Cedar Freakin' Rapids Iowa. How depressing is that?

(via Minneapolis Star-Tribune)

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa -- A church's plan for an old-fashioned book-burning has been thwarted by city and county fire codes.

Preachers and congregations throughout American history have built bonfires and tossed in books and other materials they believed offended God. The Rev. Scott Breedlove, pastor of The Jesus Church, wanted to rekindle that tradition in a July 28 ceremony where books, CDs, videos and clothing would have been thrown into the flames.

Not so fast, city officials said.

``We don't want a situation where people are burning rubbish as a recreational fire,'' said Brad Brenneman, the fire department's district chief.

Linn County won't go for a fire outside city limits, either. Officials said the county's air quality division prohibits the transporting of materials from the city to the county for burning.

Breedlove said a city fire inspector suggested shredding the offending material, but Breedlove said that wouldn't seem biblical.

The new plan calls for members of the church to throw materials into garbage cans and then light candles to symbolically ``burn'' the material.

How about we nominate Rev. Breedlove as Official Pastor of the Bush Administration, just so he can remind them as often as necessary of the "unbibilical" nature of paper-shredding? The Cedar Rapids Fire Department might chip in on his moving expenses too.

Funny how all that heavy sarcasm about "we're the government and we're here to help you" melts away as soon as the Republicans start consolidating their hold on power, isn't it? From USA today (funny how Pravda on the Potomac and Isvestia on the Hudson aren't following up on this):

Counterterrorism officials are looking into the possibility of postponing the November presidential election if there is a terrorist attack at election time, Newsweek reported Sunday.

Newsweek said DeForest Soaries, chairman of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, wants Ridge to ask Congress to pass legislation giving the government power to cancel or reschedule a federal election. Soaries said New York suspended primary elections on the day of the Sept. 11 attacks, but the federal government does not appear to have that authority.
(via USA Today)

Tom brought us up to date on this one; and I thought I was paranoid back in March: "Wingers laying the groundwork for postponing November elections". Not!

Seems to me, that in a democracy, we would want legislation to make sure that elections were held no matter what. Since otherwise, the terrorists have won, right?

Wouldn't it be a shame if election 2000 turned out to be our last free election, eh?

NOTE: Despite the spreading winger meme that the Spanish caved to AQ after the Madrid bombing, we saw that one coming and thoroughly debunked it at the time. NTodd has some typically fine analysis.

Of course, worrying about importing cheap prescription drugs from countries with national health insurance is just tinkering round the edges, since it's the market clout of the single payer that keeps the prices low. Of course, Bush wants drugs to be expensive here and everywhere:

Congress is poised to approve an international trade agreement that could have the effect of thwarting a goal pursued by many lawmakers of both parties: the import of inexpensive prescription drugs to help millions of Americans without health insurance.

The agreement, negotiated with Australia by the Bush administration, would allow pharmaceutical companies to prevent imports of drugs to the United States and also to challenge decisions by Australia about what drugs should be covered by the country's health plan, the prices paid for them and how they can be used.
(via NY Times)

And after the Australians joined the coalition of the willling. That's Bush gratitude for you!

There's a moment in every movie: Dorothy throws the bucket of water on the Wicked Witch. Michael Moore reads from "1984." Darth Vader's ship goes spinning away as the Death Star explodes in the skies over Yavin 4*. You know, the moment when the bad guy gets his comeuppance?

Via WaPo towards whom I am feeling very kindly at the moment):

In May 2001, Enron's top lobbyists in Washington advised the company chairman that then-House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) was pressing for a $100,000 contribution to his political action committee, in addition to the $250,000 the company had already pledged to the Republican Party that year.

DeLay requested that the new donation come from "a combination of corporate and personal money from Enron's executives," with the understanding that it would be partly spent on "the redistricting effort in Texas," said the e-mail to Kenneth L. Lay from lobbyists Rick Shapiro and Linda Robertson.

The e-mail, which surfaced in a subsequent federal probe of Houston-based Enron, is one of at least a dozen documents obtained by The Washington Post that show DeLay and his associates directed money from corporations and Washington lobbyists to Republican campaign coffers in Texas in 2001 and 2002 as part of a plan to redraw the state's congressional districts.

Texas law bars corporate financing of state legislature campaigns, and a Texas criminal prosecutor is in the 20th month of digging through records of the fundraising, looking at possible violations of at least three statutes.

Documents unearthed in the probe make clear that DeLay was central to creating and overseeing the fundraising.

Go read the rest when you get time. But from the looks of this, Gollum has just toppled into the Cracks of Doom, and Sauron's about to bite the big one.

UPDATE: *Thanks to alert reader Salvage who caught me putting two scenes together from two different movies where Darth Vader gets his comeuppance.

And to other alert readers who question the immediate significance of this story to the central issue of bringing down the Imperial stormtroopers...er, I mean the BushCo administration, this is an indirect strike. Tom DeLay used Enron and other illegal corporate money to hijack the redistricting of Texas. Getting that overturned is huge in itself. Getting rid of him personally is just a side benefit, albeit a particularly satisfying one because he is such a self-satisfied sanctimonius little creep.

Hey, my Mom notices that Jenna's out on the campaign trail, and she isn't impressed. Being a good liberal, I won't repeat her size-ist remarks...

The 911 Commission report is coming out next week:

Working in secret, the Sept. 11 commission is finishing a final report that several members believe will be done by week's end and have unanimous support.
(via AP)

Pass the popcorn!

Heh. More power to them. Tell me it's not a great country!

Critics of electronic voting are suing Diebold Inc. under a whistleblower law, alleging that the company's shoddy balloting equipment exposed California elections to hackers and software bugs.

California's attorney general unsealed the lawsuit Friday. It was filed in November but sealed under a provision that keeps such actions secret until the government decides whether to join the plaintiffs.

Lawmakers from Maryland to California are expressing doubts about the integrity of paperless voting terminals made by several large manufacturers, which up to 50 million Americans will use in November.

The California lawsuit was filed in state court by computer programmer Jim March and activist Bev Harris, who are seeking full reimbursement for Diebold equipment purchased in California.

Issues cited by the case include Diebold's use of uncertified hardware and software, and modems that may have allowed election results to be published online before polls closed.

They are asking California to join the lawsuit against Diebold. The state has not yet made a decision.

State election officials have spent at least $8 million on paperless touchscreen machines. Alameda County, for one, has spent at least $11 million.

Under the whistleblower statute, March and Harris could collect up to 30 percent of any reimbursement.

"This is about money now - a case of the capitalist system at work," said March, of Sacramento. "The laws on voting products and processes are unfortunately unclear. But the law on defrauding the government is really, really clear. Going after the money trail is cleaner than going after proper procedures."
(via AP)

Well. Surely Deibold's equipment is up to spec, and so this lawsuit should be easy to dismiss. Right?

Of course, all this assumes that we will, in fact, have an election...

Somehow—could it be that it's an election year?—the Republican Senate Intelligence committee released a report on the flawed intelligence the administration used to sell the Iraq war without mentioning that Bush didn't care whether the intelligence was flawed or not, as long it supported the conclusion he wanted. Michael Isikoff takes a more fair and balanced approach:

[There are] many wince-inducing moments to be found in the 500-page Senate report, which lays out how the U.S. intelligence community utterly failed to accurately assess the state of Saddam Hussein's programs for weapons of mass destruction—and how White House and Pentagon officials, intent on taking the country to war, unquestioningly embraced the flawed conclusions.

Taken together, the facts in the report show that virtually every major claim President George W. Bush used to justify the invasion of Iraq—from Saddam's growing nuclear program to his close ties with Al Qaeda—was either wrong or exaggerated.
(via Newsweek)

When even a whore like Isikoff—so instrumental in the slow-moving, media-fuelled Repubublican coup against Clinton—isn't buying, you know the administration is in "deep doo doo."

The report did offer the administration one consolation: the investigators said they found no overt evidence that intelligence-
community officials were directly pressured to distort their findings.

Except, as usual, as soon as you look at the detail, the Bush cover story falls apart:

Some U.S. intelligence analysts complained to the CIA ombudsman that "the constant questions and requests to reexamine the issue of Iraq's links to terrorism [were] unreasonable and took away from their valuable analytic time." When the CIA reached a measured and ambiguous view of the connection—"Iraq and Al-Qaeda: Interpreting a Murky Relationship" was the title of one June 2002 report—a team of Pentagon hard-liners under the direction of Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith strongly challenged the agency's conclusions. An August 2002 briefing that the Pentagon team gave to the then CIA Director George Tenet pushed evidence that Iraq might have been involved in the 9/11 attack. Their prime piece of evidence: alleged meetings in Prague between lead hijacker Muhammad Atta and an Iraqi intelligence agent. In fact, the committee found that the meetings likely never occurred.

I wonder if Dick "Dick" Cheney keeps pushing the Atta "connection" because that one would be the easiest to fake, as a little surprise?

The Pentagon team brandished a photo of a supposed October 1999 meeting between Atta and the Iraqi agent that turned out to be bogus. The Qaeda terrorist was actually in Egypt visiting his family when the rendezvous supposedly took place. Tenet "didn't think much of" the briefing, he told committee investigators, so the Pentagon team took its case to Lewis (Scooter) Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, and Stephen Hadley, the deputy national-security adviser. There they found a much more receptive audience. Libby asked for follow-up, including "a chronology of Atta's travels."

If you know anything about DC, "pressure" is exactly what Feith, Libby, Hadley, and Cheney are applying here. Essentially, they're saying "Wrong answer." No government worker, not even a civil-service protected analyst, can be unaware of the career-destroying consequences of continuing to come up with "the wrong answer." Especially for an administration with a well-earned reputation for ruthlessness and intimidation.

CIA CYA (back). That's all it is.

And the Boy Emperor's naked ass is still hanging out there, for all to see. Even a little child like Spiky.

And why? Because it didn't have enough felons on it. Well, possibly a face saving measure. After all, when a Republican, and especially a member of the Bush family, uses the words "accept responsibility," the only possibly response is hollow laughter. Anyhow:

Florida elections officials said Saturday that they would not use a disputed list that was intended to keep felons from voting, acknowledging a flaw that could have allowed Hispanic felons to cast ballots in November.

Gov. Jeb Bush said that not including Hispanic felons on the list "was an oversight and a mistake." He added, "We accept responsibility, and that's why we're pulling it back."

Governor Bush said the mistake occurred because two databases that were merged to form the disputed list were incompatible.

When voters register in Florida, they can identify themselves as Hispanic. But the felons database has no Hispanic category, which excluded many people from the list.

The decision to scrap the list was made after it was reported that of the nearly 48,000 people on the list, created by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, only 61 were classified as Hispanics.
(via AP)

Seems a little late in the game to notice this, doesn't it? It almost seems like the Republicans were looking for an excuse, doesn't it? And what about the database firm that made this kindergarten grade mistake? Could they possibly be politically connected?

The purge of felons from voter rolls has been a thorny issue since the 2000 presidential election. A private company hired to identify ineligible voters before the election produced a list with scores of errors, and elections supervisors used it to remove voters without verifying its accuracy. A federal lawsuit led to an agreement to restore rights to thousands of voters.

Secretary of State Glenda Hood said elections supervisors would find other ways to ensure that felons were removed from the rolls.

"Other ways?" Translation: Operation Bohica Summer will continue, just using other, and less obvious techniques.

The folks over at Seeing the Forest (the other blog where I've occasionally posted since hanging my old blog up last November) are wondering aloud if we're even going to have an election in November.

John Emerson (aka Zizka) even goes so far as to posit that, if we have one and Kerry wins, we won't get our new president "on time."

Hmmm. If W and the boys are really far behind and the "a vote for Kerry-Edwards is a vote for Osama" argument doesn't work, would they postpone the election? Worse yet, having lost the election, would W and the boys let Kerry and Edwards have the White House?

As a historian, this is an interesting thing to ponder. Even the Federalists, despite their hatred of Jefferson, eventually let him have the election and the White House in 1800. (If you recall, the lame duck Federalist-controlled congress had to decide who won the election because Burr and Jefferson got the same number of electoral votes.) Many in the world were quite surprised that there was a peaceful handover of the White House in 1800.

(And there are, I would contend, a rather uncomfortable number of parallels between the Federalists and the current Republicans -- for more on this, read one of my first columns for the History News Network back in June of 2002.)

As for my current opinion on the question, I'll put it this way: having watched W and his administration reach unparalleled levels of public mendacity for nearly four years now, there really isn't a damn thing that I put past these guys.

...and Tinfoil Hat Boy!

What 7th and 8th graders understand but far too many in the Republican Party, especially the so advertised "adults" preening the Bush do not:

[snip] The First Amendment protects Americans' right to express opinions about the government and to criticize the actions of government officials. Such free-speech rights are not protected in some countries. People living under a totalitarian government, for example, have no right to speak freely. If they criticize the actions of the government, they may be punished. [snip]

Thanks to Tinfoil Hat Boy who sent in that snip above. The passage itself resides in a junior high school Civics textbook. Given the similar recent outbreak of T-shirt related political "hate speech" being hurled against our Leader (His Divine Absolute Presence Commander Uhm), it might be a wise move if the Karl Rove or the RNC were to dispatch some kind of cultural purification pre-strike reconnaissance and interdiction team to remove such subversive anti-American belletristic matter from the public square before it roots itself in the collective imagination of our nation's youth. Hey, before ya know it, some traitorous kid will be printing that dangerous filth on T-shirts and selling the things to adults!

:: Previous documented T(error)-shirt threat information via Xan: BushCo vs. Civil Liberties

:: And more incidents via: The Donkey

*

Or good morning, midnight?

My reaction:

"That son of a bitch!"

The audience was not—pace poor genteel Ellen Goodman (back)—a "club." There wasn't any hissing, or other overt displays. Rather, the audience was extremely quiet, alert, attentive. No cell phones, no conversations, nobody getting up for candy or popcorn. People were really paying attention, aware, perhaps, that the message of the movie isn't coming from anywhere else in our oh-so-competitive media marketplace of ideas.

A few of my own reactions:

1. It would be a great mistake to underestimate Bush. F911's brutal closeups reveal a man who's mean as a snake and entirely without conscience. (I'm convinced, by the way, that Moore's reading of what Bush was thinking in the Florida classroom is correct: Bush was thinking "Who fucked me?" You can see the calculation going on behind the pursed lips and shifting eyes.)

2. The original sin of the Democratic party was not "the war"—it was fighting a war through unconstitutional means and without gaining the consent of the people. As a result, the Democratic party lost "the mandate of heaven" for a generation, and almost wrecked the military into the bargain. The same thing can happen to the Republican party, for the same reasons, and it should.

The movie was also replete with little facts I didn't know. One of them was that James Bath, grounded at the same time as aWol—and whose name was blacked out on the service records released by the administration—not only funded one of Bush's companies, he did so with Bin Laden money. How odd.

But the biggest thing I didn't know was this:

3. When it came time for the Senate to certify the results of the 2004 election, 25 members of the House black caucus tried to block the counting of Florida's votes, on the grounds that we now know, and could reasonably have believed then, that black voters had been disenfranchised. However, to bring their petition onto the Senate floor, it had to be signed by at least one Senator.

And no Senator would sign (see here).

Disgraceful. How much trouble would have been avoided today, if that day Democrats had stood up for what they knew was right?

And, oh yeah, 4. Al Gore is an asshole. So? Better an asshole than a stone sociopath. My opinion.

So I'm googling around trying to find confirmation on the rumor that Bush flipped a Whoopie-finger at a roadside protestor (nothing yet) a search under "Bush Pennsylvania protest" turns up some other items worthy of note. First, and sadly unremarkable these days, from the Shamokin Times-Item:

While the event [in Kutztown PA] was touted as a town meeting, it was much more of a rally in format. One woman wearing a Kerry campaign T-shirt was escorted from the arena by university and state police even before the president’s arrival.

But then, two items even more alarming, from the Allentown Morning Call:

After Bush went into the hall, Jim Wright, one of the protesters, returned to his car and found it had a broken window. Glass littered the back seat, and various items inside were shuffled around.

An officer told him the Secret Service broke into the vehicle because two metal military ammunition containers made it look suspicious. Wright said he uses the containers to carry camping gear.

''If the insurance company doesn't pay for it, I'm going to take them to court,'' said Wright, who has traveled to a dozen or so antiwar protests from Washington, D.C., to New York. ''This isn't freedom.''

Bryan Ross, chief of the Berks County/Lehigh County Regional police, confirmed that the incident happened, apparently because the Secret Service found the vehicle suspicious. There were no further details.

Daniel Finsel, 21, of Lehighton spent three hours in the Kutztown lockup — unjustly, he believes. He said he was arrested for disorderly conduct while carrying a sign reading ''U.S. Aggression Breeds Terrorism'' two minutes before Bush rode up Main Street.

Finsel was given a citation and has to appear in court to pay a fine.

''I think it was an atrocity,'' he said. ''I was put in jail because of the way I feel, and I don't think that's right at all.''

UPDATE: Alert reader Peanut pointed my wondering eyes to the primary source on the Whoopi-finger story, at a LiveJournal site of the recipient of the honor, who goes by the name of jiveturky. It's long, so just go there and read it.

The good news is that JT claims one of his co-protesting buddies and Presidential Salute recipients managed to snap a picture of the Divine Digit in operation. The bad news is that the picture posted is not of the said digit, but rather of a fence and a propane tank.

It is entirely possible that this is a subtle work of art of such profundity as to be entirely over my head, but then it is also possible that the Homeland Security/RNC Hacking Department Haff Vays Ov Playink Mitt Pictures. Or maybe it's just that jiveturky screwed up somehow. I usually leave my tinfoil hat off on weekends to let my hair recover.

Apparently, Acting President Rove hasn't directed the new Iraqi puppet government to throw those pesky reporters out. So here's a cute little story from Baghdad:

As the intense summer heat bears down on them, Iraqis are coping by swimming in the Tigris and sleeping on their roofs. But frequent power outages are testing their almost legendary endurance in the sweltering summer months.

Heat similar to that of Baghdad can be found in neighboring Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. But unlike residents of those two wealthy nations, most Iraqis don't have air-conditioned cars and homes and try to go about their business normally even on the hottest of days.

Iraqis have had a wealth of experience in coping with power outages since the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Neighbors share large power generators and, in wealthy areas, even hire technicians to run, maintain and fuel them round-the-clock. Power generating also has become a business, with some entrepreneurial Iraqis buying generators and selling the power to households.
(via AP)

Gee, sounds a lot like "two societies," doesn't it? One poor and sweltering, the other rich and pleasantly cool.

So what's your point, lambert? C'mon, out with it!

The NYT's editorial Lambert quotes at length is worthy of note because, let's face it, it's the NYT and gets more attention that it deserves.

The folks who have got it dead-on right, though, are at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. This is clipped for length but the headline is the one THEY put on it:

Intelligence CYA/Senate GOP aims to help Bush

Editorial:July 10, 2004

If anyone thinks the Senate Intelligence Committee report on pre-Iraq war intelligence failures, released Friday, is all about making needed corrections to U.S. intelligence agencies and procedures, they're mistaken. This report is all about covering the Bush administration's posterior and getting President Bush reelected this fall.

Predictably, Republicans rushed to proclaim that the report exonerated the Bush administration's prewar activities... The notion that the Bush administration acted in good faith then, only to learn later that it had been misled by the CIA, doesn't pass the smell test.

The American people were duped into war by an administration that knew exactly what it was doing. Now it's trying to prevent exposure of its prewar conniving. Its efforts are cynical attempts to thwart the proper working of American democracy. Those efforts are not worthy of the American people, and they must not be allowed to succeed.

A damn shame that all these resounding denunciations are running on a Saturday, known to be the day of lowest newspaper readership.

Well, the editorial page editors do, at least. It's a good editorial. Just two years too late, since all the facts in it were available to anyone at the time who had an open mind (i.e., paid attention to the blogosphere or the prescient anti-war critique in general):

The [Senate] report [on pre-war Intelligence failures] was heavily censored by the administration and is too narrowly focused on the bungling of just the Central Intelligence Agency. But what comes through is thoroughly damning. Put simply, the Bush administration's intelligence analysts cooked the books to give Congress and the public the impression that Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons and was developing nuclear arms, that he was plotting to give such weapons to terrorists, and that he was an imminent threat.

Yes. Where was the Times when the news was breaking?

The report reaffirmed a finding by another panel investigating intelligence failures before the 9/11 attacks in saying that there was no "established formal relationship" between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda.

Yes. Where was the Times when the news was breaking?

Sadly, the investigation stopped without assessing how President Bush had used the incompetent intelligence reports to justify war. It left open the question of whether the analysts thought they were doing what Mr. Bush wanted. While the panel said it had found no analyst who reported being pressured to change a finding, its vice chairman, Senator John Rockefeller IV, said there had been an "environment of intense pressure". But the issue was glossed over so the report could be adopted unanimously.

Yes. Where was the Times when the news was breaking?

The panel's investigation into how President Bush handled the intelligence has been postponed until after the election. But the bottom line already seems pretty clear. No one had to pressure analysts to change their findings because the findings were determined before the work started.

Yes. Where was the Times when the news was breaking?

The Senate Intelligence Committee's report ought to be the first move back from the brink of destructive public cynicism. The next must come from the president, who could help restore confidence in the government's risk assessment by simply being frank about the errors his administration made and the lessons it learned. That would do more to prepare the country for the next crisis than a full season of scary press conferences by Mr. Ridge.
(via the slowly awakening from deep sleep Times)

Um. "Cynicism"? Don't you mean "realism"?

Where was the Times when the news was breaking?

Every damning indictment the report makes, and that the Times repeats, was repeatedly evidenced in the run up to the war—with the blogsosphere doing a lot of the heavy lifting. And where was the Times? Buying Chalabi slut Judith Miller a clean set of kneepads, that's where. And then another, another, and another. (Why, oh why, does Miller still have a job, seeing as what she did, unlike Jason Blair little stories, actually changed history and might have cost American lives.)

I remember the exact story that made me understand how decrepit, how complicit, and how complacent the Times had become, the moment when things snapped: when I read the story the times "broke" that showed how the "bourgeois rioters" who intimidated voting officials in Florida 2000 where really paid Republican staffers. They had the video that gave the evidence while the recount was still going on but only published the story well after the Supreme Court selected Bush. So, the answer to the question, Where was the Times when the news was breaking? has, for a long time, been... What? "Nowhere"? "In the tank"?

When will the Times become a news gathering organization again?

The contrast is almost too much—while the wingers pervert the Constitution just fluff the base, people who take their oaths and vows seriously are preparing to commit their lives to each other:

Hundreds of same-sex couples gathered to register domestic partnerships on Saturday, the first day of a new law in New Jersey that gives gay partners some of the same rights as married couples.

More than 200 people attended a morning ceremony marking the law going into effect. Many arrived hours early, sitting on the municipal building's steps or on lawn chairs while filling out domestic partnership applications.
(via AP)

Family values. Eh?

Baby George says "I won't! I won't! I won't go to the NAACP convention because they are mean people who say bad things about me!"

Oh, you think I'm exaggerating?

"[BUSH] You've heard the rhetoric and the names they've called me."
(via our own Inky)

All together now—"Awwwwww! Poor George!"

Seriously, if Bush had real cojones, he'd go in front of this hostile audience and try to win them over. And even if he didn't succeed, he'd still look good for trying. But apparently the Bush brain trust has decided to expose Bush to deluded not yet enlightened friendly audiences, exclusively. I wonder why?

Back in one of the earlier Straight Dope books, author Cecil Adams discusses a case in which a Texas woman named Sybil Christian (I swear I am not making this up) found a mysterious blob of unknown origin in her yard. Attempts to analyze the substance, described as looking like "smooth whipped cream, only purple," were made more difficult because she had squirted the blob with a garden hose before scientists arrived, causing Cecil to note "Mrs. Christian's notions of effective planetary defense were a bit quaint."

I think about that line a lot these days. In fact it came to mind again today when the invaluable Orcinus, in a feeble attempt to distract from the fact that he was taking a few days off to, like, earn a living, pointed to a blog I never heard of before, Emphasis Added. A couple of clips from an excellent essay:

Every time the center-left has extended Bush and the Republicans the benefit of the doubt, from failing to vigorously contest the election outcome to the Patriot Act to the authorizing resolution on Iraq, they have been made to look like fools and dupes. Daschle and Gephardt tried to play ball after 9/11 and got rolled over. The conservatism of Democrats like Mary Landrieu, Max Cleland and Martin Frost didn’t buy them a whit of slack from the Republican attack machine, which pulled out all the stops to slime and defeat them by fair means and foul.

I understand the impulse to be fair and reasonable, but really, trusting that Bush’s motives are anything but completely alien to moderate and liberal American values is an abdication of responsibility by the loyal opposition. Civility is a two-way street: you give in order to get. In today’s climate of fear and loathing fostered by right-wing extremists, the only purpose served by civility on the left is to keep the truth from being spoken too loudly or too honestly.

Go read all of EA's piece if your spirits are sagging like the Bush poll numbers. Go read the "Straight Dope" if your outrage meter is already spiked and you need a good laugh. In fact, what the hell, do both.

At last the secret has been discovered.

What was it, we have wondered, about the book "The Pet Goat" that so fascinated George Bush? What kept him engrossed in it for those seven long, agonizing minutes despite hearing the news that his country was under attack?

The plotline? The challenge of making his way through a literary effort aimed at (we now know, see below) "struggling readers"? A troubling fascination with a creature associated throughout Western history with uncontrollable sexual enthusiasm?

While some of these details remain unclear, at least we know who to blame it on: Lyndon Johnson.

(via Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette)

URBANA – Proving that everything has an Urbana connection, here's one about the hit documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11."

Filmmaker Michael Moore put seven minutes of the president reading "The Pet Goat" to Florida second-graders in the film, footage taken just after Bush learned of the terrorist attack on America – and continued to read on as if stunned.

Elaine C. Bruner, a longtime UI psychologist who co-wrote the text in which "The Pet Goat" can be found, is not a Bush fan, but says she can understand why the president might seem frozen with shock after the news.

"Clinton was so verbal, so quick to respond," she says. "Bush ... well..."

In 1969, she was an academic professional and part of a team writing a series of reading texts for SRA, then part of IBM, and now part of the McGraw-Hill publishing empire.

"The series came out of the (Lyndon) Johnson Great Society," she recalls.

One of the concepts in "The Pet Goat" that the president was communicating by reading aloud is that by adding a silent e, a vowel becomes long, as in "pan" and "pane" or "man" and "mane."

The main author of the series is Siegfried Engelmann, now at the University of Oregon, she said. It was part of Project Follow Through, a 1967 initiative of Johnson's War on Poverty.

"At one time we were told there could be no pictures of junk food" in the books, she said, "but President Reagan rescued us when he declared that ketchup was a vegetable'

"Having been developed at the UI, it was universal in schools for a while, then used for struggling learners," Bruner said. "Several of us spent our careers developing (the series), so the newfound notoriety of 'The Pet Goat' is kind of ironic. There was little or no media attention to it before."

In fact, due to the film, the reading text is now a collector's item on the Internet.

Well, too much of a good thing makes Jack a dull boy. I think that's it. Night all.

Anyhow, here's the latest character assassination of Kerry/Edwards. Really unbelievable

Holding hands is no longer enough. The two Democratic candidates can't wait to get on stage for sessions of arm-gripping, face-fondling, knee-rubbing, neck-nuzzling, thigh-slapping and bear-hugging. This is not the political love that dare not speak its name from a closet, but the contrived warmth, born of the focus group, that shouts from the rooftop. And why not? We've become the therapeutic nation of huggers and fondlers.

"I've been covering Washington and politics for 30 years [said one wire-service photographer]. I can say I've never seen this much touching between two men, publicly."
(via Washington Times)

Really.

I mean, who would want to, you know, touch Dick "Dick" Cheney? Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeew!

Wierd that the state's rights Republicans can't get their heads around this, isn't it?

Oregon became the second state to register same-sex marriage licenses Friday after a state appeals court upheld a lower court order directing officials to record more than 3,000 marriage licenses issued to gay couples in Multnomah County.
(via AP)

Again, winning battles like this is a testimony to the courage of the gay community in "coming out" over the last decade. Gack... Marriage.... Family values... Pretty soon all the married gays are going to become Republicans...

As W's political fortunes go down the toilet, I've been thinking about what these guys will do in desperation about October or so.

I really do think the current plan is to argue, especially if we have some horrific terrorist attack between now and the election, that if you vote for Kerry-Edwards, that's like voting for the terrorists! That's like what those awful appeasers in Spain did, can't you see?

I don't know if W and the boys will actually roll this argument out if they're not forced to do so by being twenty points behind in the polls. However, I'm apparently not the only one who thinks this argument is in the works. Ellis Henican at Newsday essentially makes the same argument today.

As Henican puts it:

With each new pointless warning, with each new breathless plea, those around George W. Bush are trying to link the terrorists with the Democrats.

Al-Qaida wants to "influence the American election," we are told. The terrorists hope to "pull another Spain," where the ruling party was voted out after the Madrid subway was bombed.

The implication isn't accidental, and it gets real ugly real fast: A vote for John Kerry, we are supposed to conclude, is a vote for Osama bin Laden.

That's exactly the plan you see.

The interesting thing is that some of the folks who've seen the evidence, like New York police commissioner Ray Kelly, are already calling bullshit on this:

Then, without being impolite to anyone in Washington, the New York police commissioner scoffed at the notion that al-Qaida has a candidate for U.S. president.

"No," Kelly said plainly, "the information is not that they are trying to influence the election in a certain way."

But I would suspect the morons in the media (that means you Bill Hemmer) won't stop and ask this rather obvious question: what evidence do you have for your assertion or are you just talking out of your, um, rear end?

Shorter Tom Ridge: If we fail to keep you from getting killed between now and November, it will mean that we are winning the war on terror and deserve re-election.

Nothing new here, I suppose, but it seems that our esteemed Congresscritter, "Chickenhawk" George Nethercutt (R-WA), will be a featured guest at the Bastille Day celebration in Seattle this weekend:

From: Consul Seattle [mailto:consul@faccpnw.org]
Sent: Thursday, July 08, 2004 4:48 PM
To: Consul Seattle
Subject: Bastille Day July 11 Seattle Center

...

PROGRAM OF EVENTS
Opening ceremonies 11:30am
With Congressman Nethercutt
awarding medals to D-Day veterans

Besides ducking Vietnam service and minimizing "a couple of dead soldiers a day" in Iraq (remember the good old days of "only" 2 dead a day?), Nethercutt has sponsored legislation retaliating for France's refusal to enlist its sons to die for oil /Bush's re-election the "liberation" of Iraq. In return for this unflinching sense of duty and devotion to international comity, he gets to troll for Francophile and veteran votes, simultaneously!

Maybe it's just that wacky French sense of humor. Perhaps Jerry Lewis will show up with a nice, fat, cream pie?...

Nah. Who am I kidding? Being Republican means never being held accountable. For anything.

That's why all the WMD reports were wrong, you see.

Thank heavens we've been informed of this before the election!

Froomkin reports that the "inadvertent" destruction (back) of the microfilmed records that would have proved that Bush was not a deserter came as a surprise:

A surprise, indeed. Heck, just two weeks ago in an interview for this column, Associated Press Assistant General Counsel Dave Tomlin told me the AP has been informed that the microfilm in question did indeed exist.
(via WaPo)

Gee, everybody seems really confused about this. I thought Bush released "all" the records months ago? How could they have known they had "all" (ha) the records if they didn't have either the microfilm or the paper backups?

Kevin Drum has more:

On the other hand, these three months (July-September 1972) are the crucial three months in the whole Bush National Guard saga, since this is when he skipped his physical, was grounded, and then disappeared from sight for six months. It's definitely fishy that of all possible periods, this is the one that went missing. (Note also that the 3Q72 payroll records were missing in the original document dump in February, as I noted in this post, and that the 4Q72 and 1Q73 records don't seem to agree with each other. As always with this stuff, it's hard to make sense of it.)

Of course, it's the Flight Inquiry Board report on why he was grounded after skipping his physical that we'd really like to take a look at. That would be interesting to see — assuming it wasn't also "inadvertantly destroyed," of course....

And now, aWol paperwork expert and analyst paul lukasiak—the man who actually figured out how to read the Army's payroll punchcards— moves the story forward this way:

We have the previous and subsequent reports, which tell us what the "missing" report contained, i.e. nothing.

The subsequent reports have a "points grid" that show that Bush was not credited with any duty during the quarter in question. In addition, there are cumulative payroll summaries in the header of the document, and by comparing the data in the previous quarterly summary to the data in the subsequent quarterly summary, one can ascertain that Bush was paid nothing during the "missing" quarter.

This is, in other words, ALMOST a non-story. What the payroll records from that quarter would have revealed is information regarding the abortive transfer to the 9921st Air Reserve Squadron, and the loss of flight status. Because both changes would have affected Bush's payroll, there would have been data entered with regard to those changes, and that data entry would have shown up on the bottom of the payroll reports themselves.

However, the story does say that some punch cards were being released. Insofar as the payroll data was entered into the system using punch cards, it is possible that there is a punch card showing the order removing Bush from flight status.

Re the "abortive transfer", if there were no changes made in the payroll records, it is absolute proof that Bush remained obligated to attend drills with his Texas unit for that entire six month period. "Approval" of the transfer request did not mean that Bush was no longer obligated, only ORDERS tranferring Bush to the 9921st would make that happen. And those orders would be reflected on that payroll report.

So, if I have this right, the missing records would add nothing to our knowledge of whether Bush served in the period they cover; we already know that he didn't.

What the missing records would show is that he was obligated to serve, and didn't. Correct? Readers?

And it's all so very, very simple. Why doesn't Bush authorize the release of all his military records, just Like Kerry and McCain have? After all, that's just what Bush said he would do:

[RUSSERT] Would you authorize the release of everything to settle this?

[BUSH] Yes, absolutely.
(Meet the Press via TAPPED

But Bush hasn't released "everything." The latest release withheld 60 pages of medical records, and the report of the Flight Inquery Board isn't even in play. I wonder why not?

In fact, as the ever essential Orcinus shows, its a psyops campaign directed at the home front. After citing the Information Warfare Site, WikiPedia, and experts in the field, Orcinus continues:

We have in fact known from even before the outset that the war against Iraq would prominently feature psychological warfare.
Most people have assumed that [psychological] warfare would be directed against the enemy and the subject citizens. They have not stopped to consider that, by definition, it would also be directed toward the American public as well.

The entire meaning of the Iraq war -- and by extension, the "war on terrorism" -- is inextricably bound up in the psychological manipulation of the voting public through a relentless barrage of propaganda.

This is why the both the runup to the war and its subsequent mishandling have been so replete with highly symbolic media events -- many of them played repeatedly on nightly newscasts -- that have proven so hollow at their core, from the declarations of imminent threat from Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction, to phony images of Saddam's statue being torn down, to flyboy antics aboard airline carriers, to meaningless "handovers" of power. It also explains why certain important and humanizing symbols of wartime -- civilian casualties, the returning flag-draped coffins -- have been so notably absent from our views of the war.

The role of the media in this manipulation cannot be understated. The abdication of the media's role as an independent watchdog and its whole subsumation as a propaganda organ bodes ill for any democracy, because a well-informed public is vital to its functioning.

Gee, the Bush campaign wouldn't be part of this operation, would it? No! They would never do that!

That didn't take long, did it?

Despite pledging yearly reviews for all prisoners held by the U.S. military at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Pentagon officials tentatively agreed during a high-level meeting last month to deny that process to some detainees and to keep their existence secret "for intelligence reasons," senior defense officials said Thursday.

Under the proposal, some prisoners would in effect be kept off public records and away from the scrutiny of lawyers and judges.

The meeting on the Guantanamo reviews occurred months after U.S. officials came under harsh criticism by investigators and human rights observers for practices involving "ghost" detainees in Iraq who were kept hidden from inspectors for intelligence purposes.

"I don't know how any of this squares with anything. That's been my problem with this thing from the beginning," he said. "Any time you get the dark side involved, human rights tend to be less of an issue."

One critic said he spoke out about the proposal because he felt that holding detainees "off the books" was unnecessary and potentially illegal. He discounted arguments that the secrecy would withhold news of the captures from other terrorists.

"These Al Qaeda guys are smart," one of the senior defense officials who was critical of the policy said on condition of anonymity. "If Mohamed is no longer on the other end of the phone, they're going to know we've got him."
(via LA Times)

Just like torture. Trashes the rule of law, doesn't work, and it's stupid. Seems like brute force and ignorance (and psyops) is all these people know.

Just one more little act of degradation. And what is one among so many?

The U.S. government will send only one-quarter as many people to the huge international AIDS conference starting Sunday in Bangkok as it sent to the last one in Barcelona.

The decision to cut attendance, which comes as the Bush administration is rolling out its five-year, $15 billion global AIDS treatment plan, was reached long after many government scientists had made plans to attend the conference, which is held every two years. Dozens of scientific presentations were withdrawn, about 50 will be published only as summaries and not presented publicly, and dozens of meetings -- many designed to train Third World AIDS researchers and foster international collaboration -- were canceled.

Wow! Way to show those scientists respect!

The move, which officials say is to save money, is interpreted by many AIDS experts as payback for the heckling of Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson at the last AIDS conference

No, that can't be true! The Bush administration is known for its lack of petty-mindedeness generosity of spirit!

The decision has caused consternation at the CDC and the NIH and among AIDS scientists outside the government whose work is funded by those agencies. Almost nobody was willing to speak on the record because of fears of retaliation.

"What can I say? I can't say anything," an anguished NIH researcher said.
(via WaPo)

Retaliate? The Bush administration?

It couldn't be, could it, that with $15 billion to spend, Bush doesn't really want scientists involved in the process?

This post doesn't mean anything. At least I don't think it does. To be honest I'm not sure what it means. It's just one of those weird things that sometimes jumps right up in front of you and starts yelling "look at me, I'm a weird thing!"

Any of you who have ever attended an outdoor Grateful Dead concert or still remember that MSNBC talk show program hosted by Allan Keyes* will know exactly what I mean by weird things that sometimes jump right up in front of you and start yelling "look at me, I'm a weird thing!"

*True Historical Facts Note: Allan Keyes is a past Republican presidential candidate, member of the second circle of Powers, Dominions, and Virtues - and - the former ambassador to the volcanic island nation of Cretin.

Anyway, who cares. What this post is really about (although it doesn't really mean anything) is what resulted when I Googled up corrente and discovered that corrente had been adopted by something called "shopping.service.com". Where, it just so happens, you can learn anything you need to know about "remarkable skin lightning lotion." Which reminds me of something I once encountered during an outdoor Grateful Dead concert in West Virginia. If you've never experienced "skin lightning" (or west Virginia) I suggest you try it. It's remarkable. You won't be sorry. Then again maybe you will.

In any case, remarkable.skin.lightning.lotion.shopping.service.com.htm here or cached here provides a wide assortment of valuable feeds and links and teaser leads to articles and websites featuring a remarkable variety of topics and products including "one minute manicures", "Jafra consultants" and a free vat of "royal jelly product". Use your imagination.

Also available: "Neways Snap Back... remarkable stretch mark cream", "cosmic energy stones" - in the event pea gravel won't do the trick - a "white bunny named Lightning," and "a remarkable 29 cent goldfish," from "The Oregon Association of American Mothers Inc," which, if you ask me, seems like a pretty good initial offering price for a goldfish from Oregon.

You can also learn about "joint problems in dogs," (something I know a thing or two about), "PRECURSOR" colonization and early hair coloring tips among "a group of plane faring (pf) and space faring (sf) races that preceded humanity and are now thought to be extinct," and an expression the residents of Alaska have coined for people entering Alaska; "they call it Coming into the Country."

Obviously, if it's cutting edge coined immigration expressions you're looking for, Alaskians are the go-to folks.

Then, there are links to useful archived scientific topics such as this:

NewsPro Archive - July 2001. Ohldepharte. Posted Monday, July 30, 2001 by admin. By Terry Moore. By now, what with all the alien sightings, U.F.O. ... they are rumored to bear a remarkable resemblance to groundhogs ... little samples of soap, skin lotion and dog food to ... little samples of soap, skin lotion and dog food to ...

Your guess is as good as mine. In any event, at some point, should you just so happen to be shopping for cosmic gravel or a white bunny named lightning - and who the hell isn't! - you will eventually discover a link to an earlier corrente offering which offers "Stupid Republican Pet Tricks," and a "Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry' bumpersticker." Scroll even further down the page and you'll discover a link to this archived post by Lambert:

corrente / Leah, Lambert, Tresy & the farmer
The Blog of 4: Leah, Lambert, Tresy and the farmer. Saturday, June 12, 2004. Goodnight, moon. It's dark under the table, and I'm going to bed. Wonder if we're going to be able to nail that slippery little scut on torture? Well, we can dream. corrente.blogspot.com

Why are links to these corrente posts included on this page? Ya got me. But it all somehow makes sense if you think of it all as some kind of crazy integrated poetic whole. For instance, just prior to Lambert's old post cited above, you will discover a "Firecat Fanfics - Sakura and Snow - Exchange," link which will remind you:

In the shrine's inner sanctum, light fell into shadow: pale sun spilling slantwise through the open doorway and onto the tatami floor. ... the tube's cap, the glisten of lotion across Seishirou's fingers ... flowing over his pale skin, reflecting in eyes made dark ... with the potential for lightning--the frisson of a tender ...

Obvious conclusion: Loin! A tender loin! Nothing like a tender loin on a tatami floor! Especially when it involves a "Stupid Republican" and a free vat of "royal jelly product!" Just ask Jerri Ryan! Who can tell you whatever ya want to know about U.F.O.'s and "space faring (sf) races," and "Stupid Republican Pet Tricks."

See what I mean? All the dots connect somewhere down the line. Ya just gotta stick with it. Later on down the page you will be treated to a "KidsBookshelf Poems and Short Stories," link which originates from some place called www.kidsbookshelf.com and features this brief teaser:

KidsBookshelf Poems and Short Stories ... The Castle a most remarkable place Beautify with many ... on your skin it is not sticky; it is scented body lotion ... and she can make lightning come out of her ...

"...out of her..." what!? Good Gawd! Kids these days. Hey, wait a minute - that kinda reminds me of a Grateful Dead concert I once went to in West Virginia.

Oh well, at least I now know where all you Corrente readers are coming from.

Anyone know where I can get me "a scrappy Mutt" a "lightning bolt" and a "blistery stigmata?"

I'll bet Allan Keyes would know.

This post is dedicated to Matt Deatherage and Presbyterian church-basement tuba bands everywhere.

:-)

You know, I really love that phrase, "inadvertently destroyed." Sure, it starts out applying to the suddenly and mysteriously missing microfilm that would have proved Bush wasn't a deserter (back), but it seems to apply to a lot of other things, too!

That's because it combines two key aspects of the Bush administration: (1) the clusterfuck aspect, with "destroyed", and (2) the total denial of any responsibility or accountability, with "inadvertently." Yes, I think this meme's a winner!

1. The Bill of Rights—inadvertently destroyed!

2. Jobs for millions—inadvertently destroyed!

3. Fiscal sanity—inadvertently destroyed!

4. International credibility—inadvertently destroyed!

I could go on, but... Readers? No points for working in references to goats. That's so unfair.

UPDATE I forgot, in taking rhetorical flight, to mention how glad I am that farmer has finished haying or plowing or seeding or flood control or whatever he was doing. In the immortal words of Gracie Slick: "You have heard the heavy groups. Now you will hear morning maniac music!"

Gee, don'tcha just hate those "scheduling conflicts"? Don'tcha just hate it even more when your alternative is to appear before people who might ask embarassing questions about Florida, or not be sufficiently deferential, and might not even let you rub their bald heads for luck?

(via Minneapolis Star-Tribune of all places)

PHILADELPHIA -- President Bush declined an invitation to speak at the NAACP's annual convention, the group said.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People expects more than 8,000 people to attend the convention opening Saturday.

Democratic challenger John Kerry accepted an invitation to speak next Thursday on the final day of the convention, the NAACP said.

Bush spoke at the 2000 NAACP convention in Baltimore when he was a candidate. But he has declined invitations to speak in each year of his presidency, the first president since Herbert Hoover not to attend an NAACP convention, John White, a spokesman for the group, said Wednesday.

The NAACP received a letter from the White House three weeks ago declining the invitation because of scheduling conflicts and thanking the it for understanding. It was signed by presidential scheduler Melissa Bennett.

White House spokesman Jim Morrell said Wednesday that the president has spoken about ``equal opportunity and equal rights for all Americans'' in many public places.

Yeah, particularly to the "haves and the have mores....my base." That's really the way to reach out, unite not divide, right Georgie?

Goodness gracious! If I didn't have so much faith in the integrity of the Bush administration, I'd say there was some sort of cover-up going on. Remember Nixon's secretary, Rosemary Woods, and the famous 18 1/2 minute gap, where she somehow accidentally erased the tapes of her boss was incriminating himself? History does repeat itself, doesn't it?

Military records that could help establish President Bush's whereabouts during his disputed service in the Texas Air National Guard more than 30 years ago have been inadvertently destroyed, according to the Pentagon.
(via, amazingly enough, the Times)

Well, shit happens. But let's look at the detail...

It said the payroll records of "numerous service members," including former First Lt. Bush, had been ruined in 1996 and 1997 by the Defense Finance and Accounting Service during a project to salvage deteriorating microfilm. No back-up paper copies could be found, it added in notices dated June 25.

But this is too much. (1) Why are there no backups? Surely whoever did the microfilm had the duty not to destroy the originals? (2) Do we know that the originals were, in fact, there? Was there no inventory? No chain of custody for the evidence?

The destroyed records cover three months of a period in 1972 and 1973 when Mr. Bush's claims of service in Alabama are in question.

Gee. Funny it's only those three months, isn't it?

The disclosure appeared to catch some experts, both pro-Bush and con, by surprise. Even the retired lieutenant colonel who studied Mr. Bush's records for the White House, Albert C. Lloyd of Austin, said it came as news to him.

Gee. So, with no inventory and no chain of custody, why we are sure the "inadvertant destruction"—love the phrase!—happened in 1997, under the Clinton administration? (You know, given everything else The Clenis™has been accused of, it's funny he wouldn't guard those records as the appple of his eye...)

There was no mention of the loss, for example, when White House officials released hundreds of pages of the President's military records last February in an effort to stem Democratic accusations that he was "AWOL" for a time during his commitment to fly at home in the Air National Guard during the Vietnam War.

Gee. I wonder why not? The WhiteWash House said "all" the records at the time. So how did they know they released "all" the records without cross-checking against the microfilm?

The disclosure that the payroll records had been destroyed came in a letter signed by C. Y. Talbott, chief of the Pentagon's Freedom of Information Office, who forwarded a CD-Rom of hundreds of records that Mr. Bush has previously released, along with images of punch-card records. Sixty pages of Mr. Bush's medical file and some other records were excluded on privacy grounds, Mr. Talbott wrote.

Gee. That's funny, isn't it? We already know about Bush's hemmerhoids and his dental exam. No privacy problems there, eh? So what else is there that we don't know about?

Mr. Talbott's office would not respond to questions, saying that further information could be provided only through another Freedom of Information application.

How very forthcoming.

The bottom line? Bush is still stonewalling.

But Mr. [James Moore, author of a recent book, "Bush's War for Re-election,"] said [Bush] could still authorize the release of other withheld records that would shed light on his service record.

Among the issues still disputed is why, according to released records, Mr. Bush was suspended from flying on Aug. 1, 1972. The reason cited in the records is "failure to accomplish annual medical examination."

So, here, at least, things are very simple, just as they always have been.

Maybe we can't resolve, through payroll records, whether Bush did, in fact, fulfill his legal obligations to serve.

But perhaps we can resolve why he was grounded. And to resolve this, Bush just needs to authorize the release of the sixty pages that have been withheld, so far. Why on earth would Bush let this issue fester? I just can't understand....

Republican Lincoln Chafee on the anti-marriage for gay people amendment:

"Nuts", said Sen. Lincoln Chafee, R-R.I. "To be seen as the party that's coming between two people that love each other doing what they want to do ... to me that's going to be seen as a liability, politically."
(via AP)

So why put up with it, Senator? Who was it who said, "With malice toward none, with charity toward all"? Let me see, now... Hmmm....

Read this once and be shocked at what we've come to.

Then read it again, slower. Look at the numbers and look at the quotes. Look at the lengths the fascists had to go to for even a TIE vote on this in the House. They got it this time, but the tide is turning.

(via AP at NYT)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Republican-led House bowed to a White House veto threat Thursday and stood by the USA Patriot Act, defeating an effort to block the part of the anti-terrorism law that helps the government investigate people's reading habits.

The effort to defy Bush and bridle the law's powers lost by 210-210, with a majority needed to prevail. The amendment appeared on its way to victory as the roll call's normal 15-minute time limit expired, but GOP leaders kept the vote open for 23 more minutes as they persuaded about 10 Republicans who initially supported the provision to change their votes.

``Shame, shame, shame,'' Democrats chanted as the minutes passed and votes were switched. The tactic was reminiscent of last year's House passage of the Medicare overhaul measure, when GOP leaders held the vote open for an extra three hours until they got the votes they needed.

``You win some, and some get stolen,'' Rep. C.L. Butch Otter, R-Idaho, a sponsor of the defeated provision and one of Congress' more conservative members, told a reporter.

The effort to curb the Patriot Act was pushed by a coalition of Democrats and conservative Republicans. But they fell short in a showdown that came just four months before an election in which the conduct of the fight against terrorism will be on the political agenda.

``I would say, in my judgment, that lives have been saved, terrorists have been disrupted, and our country is safer'' because of the act, said Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and a man President Bush is considering to be the next director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

``We are all in that together,'' Sanders, one of Congress' most liberal lawmakers, said of the anti-terror effort. ``In the fight against terrorism, we've got to keep our eyes on two prizes: the terrorists and the United States Constitution.''

Critics of the Patriot Act argued that even without it, investigators can get book store and other records simply by obtaining subpoenas or search warrants. Those traditional investigative tools are harder to get from grand juries or courts than orders issued under the Patriot Act, which do not require authorities to show probable cause.

``We don't want tyranny,'' said Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y.

UPDATE: So I posted this here in great haste because it was breaking news, cutting about half of the original for length but leaving a lot for the quotes. And then I amble over to dKos and what do I encounter but a stern discussion on the matter of Fair Use and Copyright Law as it pertains to clips from articles. This is now shortened up considerably and you are cheerfully encouraged to go read the original in its entirety.

Poor Inerrant Boy! Don't let the door hit you on the way out!

The caption:

Bush walks away from a briefing with the media, refusing to answer questions after he was asked about Enron and the reported indictment of former CEO Kenneth Lay, who was a close adviser and fund-raiser for Bush and his father, earning him the presidential nickname of 'Kenny Boy.'(AFP/Paul J. Richards)
(via AFP)

"Refusing to answer questions"? I wonder why?

NOTE Via Kos via Atrios.

How does the Bush administration find "qualified" scientists? No surprise, but it's nice to see in print:

Two recently appointed members to the National Advisory Council for Human Genome Research, Dr. Richard Myers of Stanford University in California and Dr. George Weinstock of Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, said they had been asked inappropriate questions when they were nominated.

Weinstock said a staffer at the Health and Human Services Department called to ask "leading political questions."

"There is no doubt in my mind that these questions represented a political litmus test," he said in a statement.

Myers said he received a similar call in which he was asked about his opinion of embryonic stem cell research, which the White House opposes.

"Then the staffer asked questions that really shocked me," Myers is quoted as saying in the report. "She wanted to know what I thought about President Bush: Did I like him, what did I think of the job he was doing."
(via Reuters)

I don't see what the big deal is here.

What these so-called "scientists" don't understand, or are unwilling to see, is this: Since Bush is Chosen of God to Lead the country, how could it be inappropriate to question them regarding this Ultimate Truth?

Coincidence? You be the judge:

Crude oil prices in New York surged above $40 a barrel Thursday for the first time in more than a month after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security signaled terrorists were scheming to disrupt U.S. elections.

The rally reinforced the market's pattern of buying whenever terrorism worries surface, despite government data showing across-the-board builds in petroleum inventories last week.
(via AP)

It would be interesting to know who bought oil stocks right before the warning, eh?

Read how Digby on how to get on the "Homeland Security Watch List.

Remember when the Nazis tried to get the Danish Jews to wear a yellow Star of David? And the Danes, from the King on down, all started to wear the yellow star? It's starting to seem like we need to do something similar in this country.

NOTE Thanks to alert reader Jennifer for the pointer.

Tucked away in Seth Ackerman and John Judis' article on the Administration enlisting the Pakistani military in its re-election campaign hunt for al-Qaida leaders, there is this little nugget:

The Bush administration has matched this public and private pressure with enticements and implicit threats. ...[Colin] Powell pointedly refused to criticize Musharraf for pardoning nuclear physicist A.Q. Khan--who, the previous month, had admitted exporting nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea, and Libya--declaring Khan's transgressions an "internal" Pakistani issue.

So, for those keeping score: first Bush let al-Qaida's leadership escape from Tora Bora rather than divert military assets from attacking Iraq, then spared Abu Musab Zarqawi so we could falsely link Saddam to al-Qaida as a pretext for attacking Iraq, and gives a pass to a country that actively participates in the market for nuclear terrorism so we can catch the al-Qaida leadership we let get away 2 1/2 years ago. Meanwhile New Yorkers and Californians get the least homeland security funding per capita, Montanans the most.

Maybe someone with experience in NCAA playoffs could help, but from where I sit the rankings going into the Self-Preservation Semifinals seem to be something like this:
1. Bush and cronies
2. Rogue nuclear states
3. al-Qaida
4. US citizens
(5. Saddam)

So this is what they meant by "moral clarity."

Lambert has more.

From the New Republic, a little innoculation before the Democratic Convention in July:

The Bush administration denies it has geared the war on terrorism to the electoral calendar. "Our attitude and actions have been the same since September 11 in terms of getting high-value targets off the street, and that doesn't change because of an election," says National Security Council spokesman Sean McCormack. But The New Republic has learned that Pakistani security officials have been told they must produce HVTs [High Value Targets] by the election. According to one source in Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), "The Pakistani government is really desperate and wants to flush out bin Laden and his associates after the latest pressures from the U.S. administration to deliver before the [upcoming] U.S. elections." Introducing target dates for Al Qaeda captures is a new twist in U.S.-Pakistani counterterrorism relations--according to a recently departed intelligence official, "no timetable[s]" were discussed in 2002 or 2003--but the November election is apparently bringing a new deadline pressure to the hunt. Another official, this one from the Pakistani Interior Ministry, which is responsible for internal security, explains, "The Musharraf government has a history of rescuing the Bush administration. They now want Musharraf to bail them out when they are facing hard times in the coming elections." (These sources insisted on remaining anonymous. Under Pakistan's Official Secrets Act, an official leaking information to the press can be imprisoned for up to ten years.)

A third source, an official who works under ISI's director, Lieutenant General Ehsan ul-Haq, informed tnr that the Pakistanis "have been told at every level that apprehension or killing of HVTs before [the] election is [an] absolute must." What's more, this source claims that Bush administration officials have told their Pakistani counterparts they have a date in mind for announcing this achievement: "The last ten days of July deadline has been given repeatedly by visitors to Islamabad and during [ul-Haq's] meetings in Washington." Says McCormack: "I'm aware of no such comment." But according to this ISI official, a White House aide told ul-Haq last spring that "it would be best if the arrest or killing of [any] HVT were announced on twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight July"--the first three days of the Democratic National Convention in Boston.
(via New Republic)

Of course, there are factions in Pakistan's ISI who have no reason to love the Bush administration. But this material sounds absolutely in character for these guys, doesn't it?

Republican values: Do anything to win. Anything.

Remember the families who had to buy body armor for their sons and daughters serving in Iraq? Remember the chambers of commerce who bought armor for HumVees? Of course.

And remember how Inerrant Boy thanked them, and recognized their efforts? And reimbursed them? No, I didn't think you did.

No, that slippery little scut didn't do a damn thing, and the families are still doing the same thing. This time it's scopes:

One of the many Fillmore residents who bought raffle tickets from Krista Iverson at Fillmore's July Fourth celebration could win a .22-caliber rifle, but Krista's husband will get much more.

Lt. Robert Iverson, a Fillmore native, is in Iraq with Marine Artillery Unit 511 out of Camp Pendleton, Calif. Although the unit is on the front lines, the military has not equipped its AR16 rifles with scopes -- which obviously could better enable the soldiers to see their targets.

The Tapco company has donated 30 scopes, but Iverson's battalion needs 124, at a cost of $70 each. Krista has raised $1,200, but considering Fillmore probably won't have another festival until July 24, the mother of two is hopeful people will donate funds in her husband's name at any Zions bank.
(via the Salt Lake Tribune)

Sure, Bush can stop by a cute little lemonade stand on his way to another fundraiser—he only had a $10; I'm surprised it wasn't a $100—but when is He going to stop by Krista Iverson's stand and buy a raffle ticket there?

Answer: When Hell freezes over.

Republican values on supporting the troops: Talk the talk. Period.

Or maybe these winger loons think Krista Iverson's raffle for scopes for the troops is a shining example of privatization?

Read this story. Is this the America you know? Is this the America you want? And what does this story say about Republican "values"?

A worker with the Federal Emergency Management Agency who wore an anti-Bush T-shirt at the president’s July Fourth rally in Charleston has been sent home to Texas.

Nicole Rank, who was working for FEMA in West Virginia, and her husband, Jeff, were removed from the Capitol grounds in handcuffs shortly before Bush’s speech. The pair wore T-shirts with the message “Love America, Hate Bush.”

The Ranks were ticketed for trespassing and released. They have been given summonses to appear in court, Charleston Police Lt. C.A. Vincent said Wednesday.

FEMA spokesman Ross Fredenburg would not say Wednesday whether Nicole Rank had been fired.

“All we can say is that our federal coordinating officer, Lou Botta, sent Nicole home,” he said. “We cannot comment further, to protect her privacy. Federal privacy laws prevent us from saying anything.”
(via the CharlestonGazette)

Don't you love that claim of privacy? It ties a cute little bow on top of the whole package, doesn't it?

The full force of the State's police power being used on behalf of a political campaign? American citizens handcuffed and hauled off in restraints for wearing the wrong T-shirt? What does that sound like to you, folks?

It sounds like Republican values in action, to me. We'll be waiting for the WhiteWash House to issue some sort of condemnation for "isolated incidents" (yawn) and for the wingers and media whores to disassociate themselves from these vile actions... And something tells me that we'll be waiting a long, long time.

UPDATE Oops! I pinned the outrage meter on this one. It's just a single incident, as
Sid the Fish points out to me. My bad. It was the additional details in this one that got me. Sorry.

Certainly one way to pay off the lawyers! And the book practically writes itself, doesn't it? Robert Bryce lifts up the Enron rock in Salon and finds all kinds of crawly, squirmy things:

Lay could dish the dirt on several important topics: the [1] Karl Rove-brokered push that resulted in Enron paying Christian conservative turned super-lobbyist Ralph Reed $300,000; [2] Lay's dealings with secretary of state turned super-lobbyist James Baker; [3] why Enron hired Ed Gillespie, the man who now heads the Republican National Committee; [4] the reason for Lay's decision to allow the Bushes to use Enron's fleet of airplanes as their own; [5] what happened in those meetings with Dick Cheney and his energy task force; and [6] what really happened with the California energy crisis.
(via Salon)

Of course, Lay would have to ask fast; the book would need to hit the stands by, say, late October.... Anyhow, Bryce picks [6] as the hot topic: The phony California energy "crisis" scam:

Or better still, what might Lay tell us about the California energy crisis? Some may recall that Lay had a private meeting with Cheney on April 17, 2001, to talk about the [California] energy markets, which were reeling from skyrocketing power prices. During the meeting, Lay told Cheney that the federal government should not impose any restrictions on the markets. His memo to Cheney said that "the administration should reject any attempt to re-regulate wholesale power markets by adopting price caps." Even temporary price restrictions, the memo argued, "will be detrimental to power markets and will discourage private investment."

Cheney immediately began parroting Lay's argument. The day after the meeting, Cheney mocked the idea of price caps during an interview with a reporter from the Los Angeles Times, saying caps would provide only "short-term political relief for the politicians." He also said they would discourage investment, a matter Cheney called "the basic fundamental problem."

Today we know [and Paul Krugman wrote at the time—Lambert] that one of the fundamental problems with the California energy crisis was that traders from Enron and other energy companies were manipulating power prices at their whim -- and that they liked to joke about how they were taking money from those "poor grandmothers in California." Lay could tell us when he first learned that his traders were making huge profits by scamming California's gas and electricity markets.

Oh, and those thieving traders? Faithful Republicans, every single one. Let's watch Republican values in action. From the trading transcripts:

On the calls, traders openly and gleefully discussed creating congestion on transmission lines, taking generating units offline to pump up electricity prices and overall manipulation of the California power market.

They also kidded about Enron's hefty political contributions -- particularly to Bush's 2000 presidential campaign -- and how that could translate into more opportunity for profit in California.

"I'd love to see Ken Lay be secretary of energy," one trader said, referring to the now-disgraced former Enron chief executive whose ties to the Bush administration have drawn criticism from Democrats.

In one transcript, a trader asks about "all the money you guys stole from those poor grandmothers of California."

To which the Enron trader responds, "Yeah, Grandma Millie, man. But she's the one who couldn't figure out how to (expletive) vote on the butterfly ballot."
(AP via the Seattle Post Intelligencer

Funny ha-ha, eh?

Looting, lying, lawbreaking—Republican values in action!

Considering the source, Larry Flynt... OTOH, he was right about Bob Livingstone, remember? From Salon, and it's really not so painful if it pays for the content click through:

The first thing in your book that everyone is going to jump on is your claim that young George W. Bush paid for his girlfriend's illegal abortion.

[FLYNT:] You can't stay with a story this long and not believe in it. In 2000, I got a call from a lawyer in Houston. He told me that his client, "Susan," could prove that George W. Bush arranged for his girlfriend to have an abortion back in the early 1970s. Her boyfriend at the time, "Clyde," was pals with Bush and set up the procedure. We checked up and found that indeed "Clyde" was responsible for keeping Bush out of trouble. Bush had knocked up a girl named "Rayette." We talked to the doctor that performed the abortion. We felt we really had a blockbuster story, but about two months before we were going to break the story, "Susan" disappeared. We finally found her. She was living in a half-million-dollar home in Corpus Christi, Texas. Before that she was living in a small apartment working for $13,000 a year as a cocktail waitress. I'm not saying Bush bought her off, but I'm confident that one or more of his cronies did. The only thing that interested me in this story is -- I'm pro-choice, but to have a guy who is running on a pro-life platform ... and this procedure was committed in 1971, two years before Roe vs. Wade, which would have made it a crime.

I went to two members of the national press (during the 2000 presidential campaign) and said, "Look. I don't have anyone out on the stump. You guys do. At least ask Bush the question." You know what? They refused to. One of them had the nerve to tell me that the election was too close. "We don't want to be the ones to tip it in any direction." I thought, that gives you a really great feeling about the press.
(via Salon)

Well. Certainly the episode runs true to form. Especially the values part—buying people off.

It would be nice to have a little more collateral, though, wouldn't it?

First Rush "B-i-i-i-g Pharma" Limbaugh, then Cheney's doctor. And now it turns out the Cheney knew his own doctor was using all the time:

One thing that became clear yesterday is that Cheney has known about [his doctor,] Malakoff's problems for some time. Jonathan Reiner, director of GWU's cardiac catheterization laboratory, said in an interview that Cheney "has known for years" about Malakoff's drug dependence, although he would not be specific.

"Dr. Malakoff had frank discussions with the vice president for quite a period of time about this," Reiner said. "This was not just recent news. He has kept him apprised."
(via WaPo)

Weird that Cheney's so calm about this, eh? War on drugs, and all that. And if you knew your doctor had a drug dependency, wouldn't you change your doctor?

So, why? Putting on my tinfoil hat, the only reason I can think of is that Cheney owned Malakoff. The deal is, "Say my heart's in fine shape, and I'll keep quiet about your dependency." Eh?

"Scary!" - ? What could CNN's Judy Woodruff be referring too? What's so scary Judy? Could it be that we have a group of people in the White House who have been operating a secretive foreign policy chop shop on the taxpayer dole? Waging a war founded upon conspiracy theories, carefully orchestrated deceptions, false premises, prearranged cost plus contractual cronyism, and outright bald faced lies. Could that be what Judy finds scary? Or perhaps Judy is scared because over 800 Americans have died in Iraq and more than 4000 wounded as a direct result of such deceptions, false premises, conspiracy theories, cronyism, and outright bald faced lies.

More than 4000 missing arms, legs, hands, eyes, feet. Thousands burned, bandaged, brain damaged, beheaded -- spines snapped, folded, spindled and mutilated. And that's not counting the thousands and thousands of Iraqi citizens suffering likewise. Could Judy be afraid of that? Or maybe Judy finds it "scary!" that people such as herself helped ballyhoo, mass market, distribute, fold, lick, and rubber stamp many (if not all) of those hot metal conspiracy theories, false premises, deceptions, and outright bald faced lies with nary a second glance to the questionable veracity and/or consequences of such oily forged mechanics. Could that be what Judy finds "scary!"?

Oh, no! Nothing like that. Don't be ruhdicaliss. What Judy finds so "scary!" (with an exclamation point) is a recent poll cited by CNN senior political analyst, and visiting American Enterprise Institute goodfellow, Bill Schneider. A poll which allegedly indicates that voters, "by better than 2-1", consider John Trial Lawyer Guy Edwards, and his "experience" as such, a "strength" rather than a "weakness".

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking - OH MY GOD!!!!!!!!! - How scary is that? Sure ya are. That's what Judy thought too. Upon hearing the terrifying news she immediately exclaimed: "Scary!". Just like that. Just cacked it right up as if she were expurgating a vulgar clam which had failed to behave itself on the path to assimilation.

As a matter of fact I have a transcript snip of the televised exchange right here below: (bold emphasis mine)

SCHNEIDER: Republicans also intend to attack Edwards for being a trial lawyer. How scary is that? Not very, because by better than 2- 1, voters see Edwards experience as a trial lawyer as more of a strength than a weakness -- Judy.

WOODRUFF: Scary!

SCHNEIDER: Right.

WOODRUFF: Interesting. OK. Bill Schneider, thanks very much.

SCHNEIDER: Sure.

"Scary!" Oh yes. But Judy composed herself immediately - she is, after all, a practiced tragedienne - but for a moment there I was almost convinced she might just spring from her anchor chair and begin running around like a blind clog in a meat locker screeching "the trial lawyers are coming, the trial lawyers are coming!" and then hurl herself down a hole in the floor and scamper off to the safety of some secret CNN panic room impervious to the advances of populist litigators or peasants wielding prosthetic devices.

Anyway, considering all the scary things in the world to be scared of, I thought it a little out of character for the usually sedated hangdogish Judy Woodruff to become aroused to the extent she felt it necessary to declare a favorable public opinion poll of a particular celebrated trial lawyer's career a "scary!" harbinger of some apparently sinister harbinger variety or another.

On the other hand I don't really know what Judy is into personally. For all I know she may be returning home each evening and performing deeply discounted one hour (no waiting) human organ transplants on her kitchen table. Or chaining blind Chinese immigrants to a fleet of giant bench saws. Who the hell knows. I suppose anyone practicing home surgical remedies or running around town selling elixirs of news hokum as cures for everything from pattern baldness to Bolshevism or operating a swelter box crosscutting operation from inside a cinderblock bunker in the back yard might become a little jumpy around the notion of trial lawyers lurking in the harbingers regardless of neighborly affirmations of trial lawyer popularity in general. But, like I said, I dunno what Judy gits herself into once she exits the sparkly tee-vee screen. Could be almost anything I imagine.

She does however appear to be fond of carrying on conversations with "unidentified males" captured on videotape. That stirs the imagination doesn't it? Here's a brief sample from a July, 06 episode of Paula Zahn Now; with Judy Woodruff guest hosting. Roll nasty tape:

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JUDY WOODRUFF, HOST, "JUDY WOODRUFF'S INSIDE POLITICS" (voice- over): Tonight, Republicans target John Edwards.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No foreign policy experience.

WOODRUFF: And he's not John McCain.

That's right Judy, you boob-toob remora. "He's" not John McCain. McCain is that clingfish from Arizona who is currently darting about the country like a fawning kismet rooting for the same B-Team that portrayed him in 2000 as a reconstructed commie stooge sent home to derail the Assentation. Plus, he had that brown baby and that crazy junkie wife that he kept locked up in a trailer on the edge of town! You remember the brown baby and the crazy junkie wife on the edge of town don't you Judy? The one that Kool Aide Karl's thirsty Team-Bush spongers soaped up as suspect family character values and telling reminders of Mr. McCain's, uh, smirk smirk, "foreign policy experience".

John McCain. Yeah. Gimme a break. The man has no sense of decency or self respect whatsoever if all he has to offer at this point is himself as just one more etagere or flash of pasty leg in some twisted goosestep on behalf of the Bush Dynasty's continuing criminal cabaret freak show enterprise. To dance like a cheap whore to that terrible tune after what those BushCo. shit fiddlers put him through in 2000 is pretty weak policy indeed. Foreign or domestic.

John McCain ain't no John Edwards. That's for sure.

UPDATE CNN doens't seem to have an ombudsman (Readers?) The feedback page on "editorial slant" is here.

It's finally dawned on me. With Edwards, the final piece is in play on the board. It's going to be the Mother of All Campaigns, don't you think?

And it is a shame the way Bush demeaned himself by taking shots at Edwards, on his first day out of the box. You'd think He would stand above the fray, and all that. Sad, sad.

Oh, wait a minute. The electronic machines are computers! So that "glitchy" thing will never happen. Phew!

Voting rights groups sued Florida election administrators on Wednesday to overturn a rule that prohibits manual recounting of ballots cast with touch-screen machines, a lawsuit with echoes of the state's disputed 2000 presidential election voting.

The lawsuit said the rule was ``illogical'' and rested on the questionable assumption that electronic voting machines perform flawlessly 100 percent of the time. It also said the rule violated a Florida law that expressly requires manual recounts of certain ballots if the margin in an election is less than 0.25 percent of the votes cast.

The plaintiffs said in their suit the electronic voting machines were ``known to malfunction and to be subject to malicious tampering.''

Fifteen Florida counties containing about half the state's population use electronic touch-screen voting machines. They include the three most populous counties -- Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach -- that were at the heart of the 2000 punch card ballot recount battle.

Florida banned punch card ballots after 2000, but there have already been glitches with the electronic machines that replaced them in some counties.

Audit tests using the new touch-screen machines last year showed some of the data recorded on the Miami-Dade machines were not transferred to electronic logs that would need to be reviewed in a recount.

`The experience of Miami-Dade County alone shows that they (the machines) are subject to all kinds of errors. That's precisely why we must have a mechanism in place to recount all of the votes in close elections,'' said Florida ACLU Executive Director Howard Simon.

About 30 percent of U.S. voters cast their ballots on electronic voting machines in 2002, according to the Council of State Governments. In California, problems with the machines forced the state to rewrite its electronic voting rules in April and decertify those used in one-third of its polling places.

Florida's touch-screen machines do not produce printouts of the ballots. Other lawsuits winding through the courts have sought to require the printouts. Wednesday's lawsuit did not specifically ask for them, but said there must be some means of ensuring the integrity of the electronic machines, in order to secure voter confidence.
(Reuters via the New York Times)

Sheesh. So why not just ask for an audit trail in the suit? I don't get it.

You'd think they could have gotten this done before an election year. Oh, wait...

Kenneth Lay, the former Enron Corp. chief executive who insisted he knew nothing about financial fraud at the energy trading giant, has been indicted on criminal charges, sources told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

The action caps a three-year investigation that has already seen several other executives charged and, in some cases, already sentenced to prison for their roles in the company's scandalous collapse.

The specific charges remained under seal.

The Securities and Exchange Commission was expected to bring civil fraud charges against Lay on Thursday, including making false and misleading statements and insider trading, a person familiar with the case said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Prosecutors have aggressively pursued the one-time celebrity CEO and friend and contributor to President Bush who led Enron's rise to No. 7 in the Fortune 500 and resigned within weeks of its stunning failure. Barring last-minute delays, Lay is the 30th and highest-profile individual charged.
(via AP)

Just another example of heavy-handed government interference, if you ask me.

(via NYHoHumTimes)

WASHINGTON, July 6 - An internal investigation by the Department of Health and Human Services confirms that the top Medicare official threatened to fire the program's chief actuary if he told Congress that drug benefits would probably cost much more than the White House acknowledged...

In recent weeks, [Thomas A.] Scully has registered as a lobbyist for major drug companies, including Abbott Laboratories and Aventis; for Caremark Rx, a pharmacy benefit manager; and for the American Chiropractic Association and the American College of Gastroenterology, among other clients. All are affected by the new Medicare law, which Mr. Scully helped write.

You want the short version? It's here, albeit buried in the NINTH (of 17) paragraph:

Representative Pete Stark of California, the senior Democrat on the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health, said, "It sounds as though the Bush administration examined itself and found it did nothing wrong.''

Go read the whole thing; while the story is calculated to cloud reader's minds, most of the paragraphs are short, as befits the literacy-challenged modern media.

When "journalistic objectivity" prevents a reporter from plainly and clearly telling the truth--that Thomas Scully is a liar, a thug and a thief who's going get away with this sleaze because Republicans control Congress too--then maybe it's time to revisit the whole idea.

No, it's not something from Cheney's Word of the Day Desk Calendar.

I have no idea what this story means. But they're taking a batch of reservists, Marines, some of whom have already been deployed to the qWagmire once, and shipping them the hell off to Djibouti. Oil? WMD? Halliburton have something there that needs protecting?

And catch the part about a tank battalion, going to provide security, but not taking their tanks along. This one's been way far under the radar, whatever it is.

(via The State (Columbia SC))

The couple, married two weeks, said farewell Tuesday for what could be several months as 73 Marine reservists left Eastover on the first leg of a trip that will take them to the Persian Gulf region.

The part-time Leathernecks, members of Delta Company, 8th Tank Battalion, will spend the next three weeks in training. They will then head for Dijibouti, a tiny desert nation in the Horn of Africa that is half the size of South Carolina.

Dijibouti is home to Camp Lemonier, a former French Foreign Legion outpost now used by U.S. forces for anti-terrorism.

Delta Company is joining about 3,000 other reservists and National Guardsmen from South Carolina who are on active duty fighting the war on terrorism.

Bracewell, 33, a 10-year veteran of the Marines, fought with the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force during the opening months of the Iraq war. He had to say goodbye again to his wife and 7-year-old son who are at home in Atlanta.

Delta Company will be providing security at Lemonier. That means they had to leave behind their M1A1 Abrams tanks.

“That’s the tough part because the tanks are our comfort zone,” said Gunnery Sgt. Roger Conrad, 43, of Seneca.

Tonto and the Lone Ranger are out riding one day when they are suddently set upon by a large, angry war party of Apaches. Hastily taking shelter behind some rocks they shoot and shoot, but their foes are many and their bullets few.

Lone Ranger: Gosh, Tonto old friend, I guess we're not gonna make it this time.

Tonto: What you mean "we", white man?

(via Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

LONDON — British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Tuesday that the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is an "anomaly" that has to end.

Blair confirmed that he had asked President Bush to free the remaining four Britons detained in the camp.

"Guantanamo Bay is an anomaly that has at some point got to be brought to an end," Blair told a committee of lawmakers.

Blair is under pressure from political opponents and many lawmakers of his own governing Labour Party to resolve the issue. Some suggest the deadlock reveals that he actually wields little influence in Washington, despite supporting Bush in the Iraq war.

We need him on the Republican ticket!

I'll start!

Um...

UPDATE

From alert reader Attaturk, The many moods of Dick "Dick" Cheney. CAUTION: Not over breakfast or at lunch! Noone will be admitted to the theatre after the movie begins!

Under the amazingly deadpan headline, "Pentagon Deputy's Probes in Iraq Weren't Authorized, Officials Say", this, from the Los Angeles Times:

A senior Defense Department official conducted unauthorized investigations of Iraq reconstruction efforts and used their results to push for lucrative contracts for friends and their business clients, according to current and former Pentagon officials and documents.

John A. "Jack" Shaw, deputy undersecretary for international technology security, represented himself as an agent of the Pentagon's inspector general in conducting the investigations, sources said.

In one case, Shaw disguised himself as an employee of Halliburton Co. and gained access to a port in southern Iraq after he was denied entry by the U.S. military, the sources said.

In that investigation, Shaw found problems with operations at the port of Umm al Qasr, Pentagon sources said. In another, he criticized a competition sponsored by the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority to award cellphone licenses in Iraq.

In both cases, Shaw urged government officials to fix the alleged problems by directing multimillion-dollar contracts to companies linked to his friends, without competitive bidding, according to the Pentagon sources and documents. In the case of the port, the clients of a lobbyist friend won a no-bid contract for dredging.

Shaw's actions are the latest to raise concerns that senior Republican officials working in Washington and Iraq have used the rebuilding effort in Iraq to reward associates and political allies.
(via LA )

Mercy!

After lying, looting is what Republicans do best!

Remember back on Monday when those folks wore the "anti-Bush T-shirts" to the Bush rally and got, not just tossed out but arrested (briefly) for "trespassing"? And we all said how cool it would be to do something like that, particularly if a (properly patriotically-clad) friend was undercover nearby with a videocamera?

Have at it, comrades.

(via Hagerstown MD Herald-Mail)

CHAMBERSBURG, Pa. - More than 200 tickets were available Tuesday afternoon at Franklin County Republican Headquarters for a campaign stop by President Bush in York, Pa., on Friday.

"We probably have 250 out of an allotment of 332," county Republican Chairman Roger Beckner said Tuesday afternoon. Bush will be appearing in Toyota Arena at the York Expo Center, he said.

Tickets are limited to two per person and are being given away on a first-come, first-serve basis, Beckner said. The headquarters are at 293 Southgate Mall. Headquarters are open from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. or until the tickets are gone, Thomas said.

Residents of south-central PA, MD, WV areas particularly wanted, at least to pick up the tickets. Bonus points if you have, know or are a civil-liberties attorney.

A hilarious moment on CNN this morning. Bill Hemmer had Mr. "$100 Haircut" Cliff May from NRO and Victor Kamber on to talk about the selection of John Edwards as Kerry's running mate.

At the end of the time slot, May, trying to get in the last word, said something to the effect of "The selection of John Edwards is all sizzle and no steak." At this point Hemmer (a stuffed shirt if I ever saw one) got this grin on his face and asked Cliff May if he'd read the Wall Street Journal this morning. Hemmer then read the last line of a WSJ editorial which, predictably, matched exactly what May had just said. Hemmer asked May, rather abruptly, if he was ripping off the WSJ. May, obviously embarrassed, said, "Um, gee, I'm sorry about that if I did it. Um..."

At this point, Victor Kamber interrupted and got the last word in, saying something like this:

"If this is true about the Edwards decision, that it's more sizzle than steak, I'll tell you one thing. Edwards certainly brings a great deal more steak to the table than George W. Bush did four years ago, I'll tell you that."

Indeed.

If I can remember, I'll try to post a transcript in an update to this post later today.

It didn't take more than 30 minutes for the Beltway corporate enclave media courtesans at CNN and MSGOP to begin nailing the GOP talking points frame to the wall. See, it's like this: John Edwards = trial lawyer! John Edwards = inexperience in foreign policy! John Edwards = Democrat's attempts to appeal to Southerners because the South has always been ignored by the unappealing anti-southern Democrats!

And on and on the RNC script managed message goes.

The Republican Party is not required to demonstrate to anyone at CNN or MSGOP that their excitable charges against Edwards are anything but pre-fabricated cartoon characterizations founded in hyper-spin, semantic propaganda, and old off the shelf canard. CNN and MSGOP certainly are not going to ask the right wing dope peddlers for any such detailed explanation of the pre-bottled medicine show potion they are hustling. Oh heavens no! Because, like all cagey corporate marketing shills, CNN and MSGOP make the rockets go up - who cares where they come down - that's not our department - say the clowns on the town. (sorry Tom Leher)

The Cakewalk News Network (CNN) and their little sidekick pip MSGOP are essentially nothing but pitch doctor potion bottlers themselves. Ya know the old snake oil concoctions: WMD! Yellowcake! Killer Drone Plane Invasion! 45 Minute Mushroom Cloud! Mission Glossy Flower Tossy! and on and on.... so much conspiracy theory and romantic moony-eyed insta-cures bottled up and peddled by Pentagon network media embeds, right wing think tank alchemists, elitist Beltway cocktail party voodoo-politick pundit pimps and wannabe celebrity Dartmouth Kool Aide Kiddy Kultists. All eventually delivered into millions of living rooms each afternoon by an unquestioning easily bewitched cacaphony of slutty corporatist cable TV "News" network cosmetic counter groovies and studio tanned automatons.

Like, yah know what, sometimes when I watch Judy Woodruff on CNN I begin giggling like a hapless nervous ninny because I imagine go-go fetch dancer Judy as a lithe bikini clad sunken-eyed skull shrunk anti-version of Goldie Hawn wriggling about on a Laugh In stage as the camera zooms in on a smooth milky thigh that displays the techno-colored tattoo flashback "SOCK IT TO ME BABY!". I know, it's a perverted muse, but, well, hey, I've smoked myself a forest of wet curly-bud and gobbled up pages of serrated paper dreams so what the Dick-F#%!-U-Self-Cheney do I know? Nuttin. Nuttin a'tall.

Anyway, lets flash back to the whole appeal to the South thing that I mentioned earlier. You know, the pill that the Kool Aide Kids in the corporate media and their RNC groove daddios want you to swallow. The smooth plastic pill that conjures hallucinations describing Dems as hostile to that whole "southerner" thingee. You know how that old times here is not forgotten come on goes.

So, I decided to look up the history of the Democratic Party's choice of "southerners" as contenders for the Dem Party's top slots. (as if this one required some great exercise in documentary journalism). Here goes:

Number of "southern" Presidential and Vice Presidental candidates - excluding Texans - that have been advanced by the Democrats since 1944: Answer: 13

Number of "southern" Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates - excluding Texans - (which, by the way, would constitute ONLY ONE particular "Texas" family ONLY!) that have been offered up to the faithful by the Republican Party since 1944: Answer: 0 (ZERO - NOT ONE SINGLE SOUTHERN STATE CANDIDATE!)

So, I don't suppose the potion peddlers in Atlanta (CNN) might be interested in this historical numerology given the way some southerner's (you know who you are) entertain traditional hankerins' for heapin' helpins' of romanticized historical hokum and boo-hoo woe is me lost cause mythology. Whatever.

In any case, here's the real historical dope on the Democratic Party's candidate selection record as it caters to that whole tender "southern" candidate sensibility thing.

Maybe a few dandy "southerners" (again, you know who you are) would take to revisitin' tangible reality one day? That sure would be a monumental Civil Wow reenactment occasion. At least when it comes to analyizing which political party has most often advanced candidates representing the "South" over the past 60 years. Not that any of the corporate confederate reality benders at CNN or MSGOP will abandon their company store party hookah, climb down off of their shit fed mushroom stump, and wander amongst the fields of flowery statistics below. Oooo-nooo! That would be so like square man! Like think outside the box man! Ooo-Baby!

Yeah right.

Anyway, below is a brisk rundown of the presidental candidate election crop planted since 1944. Harvest at will, sit back, bask in that warm southern summer sun, and light up fat bone for me.

=====
UH-OH!!! DATA UPDATE/CORRECTIONS AHEAD!
Thanks to Andy (see comments) for pointing out that Ike ran from NY in both the 52 and 56 election and that Nixon also ran from NY in both 68 and 72. I screwed up some figgers below so I've made corrections where needed. (I hope) - Year by year election stats available via: this place
=====

Southernerners named to national tickets since 1944: (excluding Texas as a southern state)
Republicans = 0 - as in ZERO!!!!!!!!!! NONE! NOT ONE.
Democrats = 13

Southerners named to national tickets since 1944: (when including Texas as a southern state)
Republicans = 6 - Each one named George Bush. George HW Bush 4 times / George W Bush twice.
Democrats = 16

Texans named to national tickets since 1944:
Republicans = 6 Each one named George Bush.
Democrats = 3

Lefty Coasters (Californians) named to national tickets since 1944:
Republicans = 8 correction: 6
Democrats = 0 - as in ZERO!!!!! NONE! NOT ONE.

Snooty elitist New Yorkers named to national tickets since 1944:
Republicans = 4 correction: 7 (5 correction: 8 if Nelson Rockefellar included)
Democrats = 2

Snooty elitist intellectuals from New York and Massachusettes named to national tickets since 1944:
Republicans = 5 correction: 8 (6 correction: 9 if Nelson Rockefellar included)
Democrats = 5

Zany Hollywood Left Coaster actors named to national tickets since 1944:
Republicans = 2 (Reagan, twice)
Democrats = 0

Southern states represented on national REP Party tickets since 1944: (excluding Texas)
Represented on Republican tickets = NONE

Southern states represented on national DEM Party tickets since 1944: (excluding Texas) = North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, Georgia, Missouri, Alabama, Kentucky.

RAW SEEDLESS DATA:

1944:
REPUBLICAN candidates
P - Thomas Dewey (NY)
VP - Earl John William Bricker (Ohio)

DEMOCRAT candidates
P - Franklin D. Roosevelt (NY)
VP - Harry Truman (Missouri) Southern State

1948:
REPUBLICAN
P - Thomas Dewey (NY)
VP - Earl Warren (California)

DEMOCRAT
P - Harry Truman (Missouri) Southern State
VP - Alben William Barkley (Kentucky) Southern State

1952:
REPUBLICAN
P - Dwight D. Eisenhower (NY)
VP - Richard Nixon (California)

DEMOCRAT
P - Adlai Stevenson (Illinois)
VP - John Jackson Sparkman (Alabama) Southern State

1956:
REPUBLICAN
P - Dwight D. Eisenhower (now from PA) correction: (NY)
VP - Richard Nixon (California)

DEMOCRAT
P - Adlai Stevenson (Illinois)
VP - Carey Estes Kefauver (Tennessee) Southern State

1960:
REPUBLICAN
P - Richard Nixon (California)
VP - Henry Cabot Lodge (Mass)

DEMOCRAT
P - John F. Kennedy (Mass)
VP - Lyndon Johnson (Texas) Southern State Texan

1964:
REPUBLICAN
P - Barry Goldwater (Arizona)
VP - William Edward Miller (NY)

DEMOCRAT
P - Lyndon Johnson (Texas) Southern State Texan
VP - Hubert Humphrey (Minnesota)

1968:
REPUBLICAN
P - Richard Nixon (California) correction: (NY)
VP - Spiro Agnew (Maryland)

DEMOCRAT
P - Hubert Humphrey (Minn)
VP - Edmund Muskie (Maine)

1972:
REPUBLICAN
P - Richard Nixon (California) correction: (NY)
VP - Spiro Agnew (Maryland) resigns 1973
VP - Gerald Ford (Michigan) replaces Agnew as VP.

DEMOCRAT
P - George McGovern (S. Dakota)
VP - Thomas Eagleton (Missouri) Southern State
VP - Sargent Shriver (Maryland) replaces Eagleton on ticket.

***
1973 - Nixon resigns:
VP - Gerald Ford (R - Michigan) becomes President.
1974:
GOV - Nelson Rockefeller (R - NY) appointed Vice President.
***

1976:
REPUBLICAN
P - Gerald Ford (Michigan)
VP - Bob Dole (Kansas)

DEMOCRAT
P - Jimmy Carter (Georgia) Southern State
VP - Walter Mondale (Minnesota)

1980:
REPUBLICAN
P - Ronald Reagan (California)
VP - George HW Bush (Texas) Southern State Texan

DEMOCRAT
P - Jimmy Carter (Georgia) Southern State
VP - Walter Mondale (Minn)

1984:
REPUBLICAN
P - Ronald Reagan (California)
VP - George HW Bush ("Texas") Southern State Texan

DEMOCRAT
P - Walter Mondale (Minn)
VP - Geraldine Ferraro (NY)

1988:
REPUBLICAN
P - George HW Bush (Texas) Southern State Texan
VP - Dan Quayle (Indiana)

DEMOCRAT
P - Michael Dukakis (Mass)
VP - Lloyd Bentsen (Texas) Southern State Texan

1992:
REPUBLICAN
P - George HW Bush (Texas) Southern State Texan
VP - Dan Quayle (Indiana)

DEMOCRAT
P - Bill Clinton (Arkansas) Southern State
VP - Al Gore (Tennessee) Southern State

1996:
REPUBLICAN
P - Bob Dole (Kansas)
VP - Jack Kemp (Maryland)

DEMOCRAT
P - Bill Clinton (Arkansas) Southern State
VP - Al Gore (Tennessee) Southern State

2000:
REPUBLICAN
P - George W Bush (Texas) Southern State Texan
VP - Dick Cheney (Wyoming)

DEMOCRAT
P - Al Gore (Tennessee) Southern State
VP - Joe Lieberman (Connecticut)

2004:
REPUBLICAN
P - George W Bush (Texas) Southern State Texan
VP - Dick Cheney (Wyoming)

DEMOCRAT
P - John Kerry (Mass)
VP - John Edwards (North Carolina) Southern State

NOTE: For the purpose of this post I've used the old Confederate States of America model to define what constitutes a "southern" state. I've also included Kentucky and Missouri on the "southern" roster. Although each remained officially loyal to the Union during the war many residents from both KY and the Show Me State remained sympathetic to the Confederate cause and did appoint governments in exile which supported the CSA. Additionally, for cultural and geographic reasons, I've included Missouri and Kentucky in the "southern" states column since I consider each of them more "southern" than Texas; which, despite its inclusion in the CSA, and the fact that Sam Houston was heaved overboard for refusing to support the Lost Cause, remains to a some extent geographically and culturally on the "western" edge of what I'd define as a genuinely "southern" state.

Therefore, "southern" states for the purposes of this post will include: SC, MISS, FLA, ALA, GA, LA, TX, VA, ARK, TENN, NC, KY and Missouri. I'll leave others to haggle over the fate of Maryland. I personally don't consider Maryland a "southern" state any more than I'd consign southern New Jersey or Dover Delaware to the mellon patch of Dixie. But, again, I'll leave the matter of Maryland's manly deeds and womanly words - fatti maschii, parole femine - to the mercy of others.

*

So, the same law that lets slots into Philly, so we can budget for the schools on the backs of gambling addicts, also lets legislators invest in gambling firms.

Boy, that's beautiful, isn't it? I wouldn't mind if they just voted themselves a raise, but to vote themselves a piece of the corrupting enterprise they brought into being through their own laws, and will then pretend to regulate.... Well, it's a classic case of the self-sucking ice cream cone, isn't it? More than a little crass. Even for our Republican legislature.

Gee, I like "crass," though. Gotta work "Crass warfare" into a headline....

Faugh.

Really unbelievable even for these guys.

In a secret operation, the United States last month removed from Iraq nearly two tons of uranium and hundreds of highly radioactive items that could have been used in a so-called dirty bomb, the Energy Department disclosed Tuesday.
(via AP)

1. "Last month"?! What took them so long?

2. How do we know that we got all of it? The answer is, that we don't, because one of the many things that Bush botched in the occupation was leaving nuclear sites unguarded, so that they could be looted.

It's crystal clear that this is a cover-your-ass, election year gimmick, with no substantive impact whatever.

If these clowns were serious about loose nukes, this would have been the first thing that they took care of. Instead, they waited many months. Guess they finally figured out that even though Manhattan and Boston are Blue, it would look really bad if we lost one during a convention. So they cook up this transparent piece of flummery.

Where's the outrage?

We're casting pearls before swine and not even getting a damn pork chop in return.

(via Juan Cole), who is venturing further into politics these days:

Edwards may be the Anti-Cheney in ways that could be important to the campaign. Cheney's use of foul language on the Senate floor and increasing testiness suggest that he feels vulnerable on the Halliburton issue.

One of the scandals that has been reported but hasn't really broken yet is the way in which Halliburton gained contracts to provide services to US troops in an emergency but has been unable actually to provide those services. The summer of 2003 was hell on the troops because they had no quonset huts or air conditioning. Their shaving cream cans were exploding in the desert.

Why didn't the army just build them quonset huts? Because that task had been contracted out to civilians. And why didn't civilians do the job? Because civilians cannot be ordered into a war zon, and Halliburton and KBR often simply could not put enough civilian personnel into the field to do the jobs contracted for in a timely manner.

Who suffered? The US troops. Why? Because the Bush administration gave a soldier's job to wealthy civilian corporations unequipped to handle it. Edwards is well placed to make hay with this sort of thing if he is canny about it.

If you never put Juan Cole on your bookmarks/favorites list, you really should. If you have him there but don't read him every day, you really should as well. The SCLM are still covering iWreck but it's no longer the lead on the networks every night. The whole point of the "turnover" was to get the US press out and your attention elsewhere.

Quoting the AP story in its dead-pan entirety:

The Sept. 11 commission is standing by its finding that al-Qaida had only limited contact with Iraq before the terrorist attacks, a determination disputed by Vice President Dick Cheney.

The 10-member, bipartisan panel issued a one-sentence statement Tuesday saying it had access to the same information as Cheney, who suggested strong ties between ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida.

Those ties were a central justification the Bush administration gave for going to war with Iraq and were called into question after the commission released a preliminary report last month. The report cited contacts between Saddam's regime and Osama bin Laden but said there was no "collaborative relationship."

Cheney criticized the commission's finding in an interview with CNBC and said there "probably" was information about Iraq's links to terrorists that the commission members did not learn during their 14-month investigation. The commission statement disputed that.

"After examining available transcripts of the vice president's public remarks, the 9/11 commission believes it has access to the same information the vice president has seen regarding contacts between al-Qaida and Iraq prior to the 9/11 attacks," the commission said.

The commission invited Cheney to offer any evidence that he thought it didn't have but never received any information.
(via AP)

Call these guys, and they don't even have the grace to back down. They just go on as if nothing had happened.

Hey, who put the "lie" in "liability"? Dick "Dick" Cheney, that's who!

Let's hope Bush doesn't dump him. Cheney means votes for us.

I sure know where I want to be in the summer. The Riviera? Forget it. Dallas.

What I don't understand is why the wingers need to up a film festival when they've already got FUX, 24/7.

As Xan points out, it's a thumb in the eye for Republican operatives who claim we write off the south. The Nation has other reasons:

• Consistency With Kerry: For better or worse, Kerry and Edwards are cut from the same ideological cloth, as their Senate records illustrate.


• Small-town Appeal: Democratic fortunes collapsed in rural and small-town America in 2000, tipping the balance to Bush in a number of key states.


• Southern Possibilities: Polls suggest that, while it's an uphill struggle, Kerry could win as many as four southern states: Florida, Louisiana, Arkansas and North Carolina.


• Some Liberal/Left Appeal


• A Real Challenger for Dick Cheney

Above all, however, Edwards brings to the Kerry campaign something that has been missing to this point: a recognizable and appealing domestic-policy message. Kerry secured the nomination by playing on his record as a veteran and his foreign policy and national security experience. Democratic caucus and primary voters bet, perhaps wisely, that those strengths would be needed in a race with Bush. But Kerry never developed a functional, let alone inspiring message for the home front. With his talk about the need to close the economic gap between what he referred to as the "two Americas," and with his emphasis on developing programs to aid the working poor, Edwards renewed old Democratic Party themes that will play very well--especially with wavering Democrats and independents--in a year when pessimism about the economy could yet decide the direction of the presidential race.
(via Nation)

I agree with the The Two Americas thesis. And I think it rings true with a lot of people's experience. Wouldn't it be great of health care emerged as the ultimate wedge issue?

"That boy's talkin' sense, Merle!"

About time. And lest we forget:

The FBI considers the anthrax investigation its most complex ever. Letters laced with anthrax that were mailed to government and news media offices, including to Sens. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and to The New York Post and NBC anchor Tom Brokaw. No one was charged.
(via AP)

I've always wondered why no Republican Congressmen were attacked...

Here's the latest of Inerrant Boy's shifting justifications for the war:

[BUSH] Our immediate task in battle fronts like Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere is to capture or kill the terrorists ... so we do not have to face them here at home," Bush told a cheering crowd outside the West Virginia Capitol.
(AP via News Tribine)

Except... Except... Let's look at some numbers:

Only 90 of the more than 5,700 people in custody in Iraq as security risks are foreign fighters, defense officials said on Tuesday, a figure that suggests the Bush administration may have overstated the role of outside militants in the deadly insurgency.

The officials, who asked not to be identified, said the U.S. military command handling security detention facilities in Iraq confirmed a report in USA Today that fewer than 2 percent of those in custody were foreigners.

The small percentage indicates the war in Iraq may not have attracted very many Islamic militants from other countries.
(via Reuters)

So, who exactly where these "terrorists" we would "face at home" if we didn't fight the war?

1. The 5,700 Iraqis? (Assuming, of course, that all of the Iraqis in our jails ought to be there)

2. The 90 foreign fighters?

And was it worth it to spend $161 billion (so far) to capture either the 5,700 or the 90?

Maybe we should have just carpet-bombed the middle east with dollar bills. It probably would have been cheaper, and I bet it would have been more effective.