Keeping Watch

Link of the Day:

2007-01-26T01:12:00.000-05:00

Jump The Shark.

Filed Under "Yikes"

2007-01-25T23:42:00.000-05:00

Yikes.

Cool.

2007-01-25T21:31:00.000-05:00

I wish my Dell did this.

The sad thing is, the thing will probably be considered Legacy in one to two years.

YCMTSU

2007-01-25T21:29:00.000-05:00

You Can't Make This Shit Up.

We've Heard This Tune Before

2007-01-25T19:28:00.000-05:00

First we have this from Think Progress:

Six months ago, Harper’s Ken Silverstein reported that “in spite of pressure from CIA analysts, intelligence czar John Negroponte was blocking a new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq.” National Intelligence Estimates present the consensus view of the U.S. intelligence apparatus. Despite pressure from Congress, the administration insisted it could not complete the NIE until January 2007.

Last week, however, an administration intelligence official told senators that the report is still not complete. According to Silverstein, Senate hearing attendees “believe that senior intelligence officials are stalling because an NIE will be bleak enough to present a significant political liability.”

Yesterday, NPR host Diane Rehm may have revealed why the NIE remains so politically sensitive. On her national radio show, Rehm said:

It’s my understanding that the National Intelligence Estimate is going to suggest that adding troops is the wrong way to go, that it’s not going to improve the situation. CLICK HERE FOR AUDIO

Yesterday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), and the House and Senate intelligence committee chairmen wrote President Bush “urging prompt completion of a national intelligence estimate (NIE) on Iraq first requested by Congress six months ago.” Read the full letter HERE.

Followed by this catch from Kos:

Sorry. This doesn't make me feel better.

In an interview, Pelosi also said she was puzzled by what she considered the president's minimalist explanation for his confidence in the new surge of 21,500 U.S. troops that he has presented as the crux of a new "way forward" for U.S. forces in Iraq.

"He's tried this two times — it's failed twice," the California Democrat said. "I asked him at the White House, 'Mr. President, why do you think this time it's going to work?' And he said, 'Because I told them it had to.' "

Asked if the president had elaborated, she added that he simply said, " 'I told them that they had to.' That was the end of it. That's the way it is."

Apparently, Iraq is a mess because Bush hadn't gotten around to telling the generals it "had to" work. But now that he has, all's well that ends well.

Now shut up and clap louder!

The people with the statistics and a vague understanding of military and colonial history are against the surge, and the politicians and keyboard commandos who have been wrong about everything are for it. It's 2003 all over again. What's the saying about the definition of Insanity again?

White Power!

2007-01-25T18:45:00.000-05:00

Shorter White Picket Fence: Jews suck. Niggers suck. Arians rawk!

Spocko vs. KSFO

2007-01-25T18:36:00.000-05:00

FDL has the latest.

Budget Spin vs. Budget Reality

2007-01-25T16:51:00.000-05:00

The CarpetBagger Report:

I saw a surprising number of headlines yesterday about the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office’s budget estimates, and how the federal government really is on track towards balance by 2012. It’s probably worth taking a moment to remember that it’s completely untrue.

The federal budget deficit will fall to $172 billion this year and $98 billion next year, then disappear completely by 2012, according to a report released yesterday by the Congressional Budget Office. But virtually nobody — not even top CBO officials — believes it.

That is because the CBO, the nonpartisan office that supplies Congress with cost estimates, is required to make some whopping assumptions, including: that all of President Bush’s tax cuts will expire on schedule in 2010; that the alternative minimum tax will be permitted to ensnare millions of additional taxpayers; and that the war in Iraq and other military operations will never cost much more than the $70 billion that has so far been approved for the fiscal year that ends in September.

Back in the real world, even Democrats want to extend at least some of the Bush tax cuts. Even the White House wants to halt the expansion of the alternative minimum tax. And, as for global war efforts, the president is calling for an additional 21,500 troops to be sent to Iraq and is expected to ask Congress to approve an additional $100 billion for this year alone.

In other words, all of the “good” news we heard yesterday is a bit of a sham.

Moreover, as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities explained this week, the CBO also considered “alternative scenarios” for the next several years, including a more realistic set of expectations regarding tax cuts and the war. With these numbers, existing budget policies are expected to add as much as $3.4 trillion to the national debt.

The president said in his State of the Union that he can keep all of his tax cuts and balance the budget “within the next five years.” Frankly, I’d love to see him try. Even the CBO acknowledges that Bush can move towards balancing the budget or he can fight to keep his tax cuts — but he can’t do both.

Read on for some suggestions on how Democrats can handle this politically.

Forget Raising the Minimum Wage

2007-01-25T15:59:00.000-05:00

...how about eliminating it?

Senator Wayne Allard (R-CO)... went for broke this week and introduced a bill that would have eliminated the Federal Minimum Wage entirely and left the wage rate for the lowest-paid workers to each state.

*

In Kansas, this would mean that workers would revert to the state-mandated minimum wage of $2.65 per hour, which is currently superseded by the federal minimum of $5.15.

*

So, according to Allard, employees in all states should expect that the good-hearted nature of business would compensate them in a way that's fair and just -- yeah, that notion has worked out well for us in the past. He also contends that it's unfair for the federal government to mandate a whopping $7.25 per hour when those people in Kansas know damn good and well that they can support their families on just $2.65.

Fortunately, saner heads prevailed and Allard's disgusting legislation was killed, but with 28 Republican Senators voting in favor of no federal oversight of the lowest wage an American worker can be paid.

Check out the list of those 28 Republican Senators who voted in favor of this bill. Any of those names look familiar? Any of those names running for President in two years?

National Spincurity

2007-01-25T14:14:00.000-05:00

Jonah Goldberg stays true to the Twelfth Commandment of the Republican Party ("Thou shalt smear Democrats as undermining the national interest"):

The 11th Commandment for liberals seems to be, "Thou shalt not intervene out of self-interest." Intervening in civil wars for humanitarian reasons is OK, but meddling for national security reasons is not. This would explain why liberals supported interventions in civil wars in Yugoslavia and Somalia but think being in one in Iraq is the height of folly. If only someone had thought of labeling the Korean conflict a humanitarian intervention back then, we might not face the horror and the danger from North Korea today.

You may remember similar arguments being used against -- among countless others -- Wesley Clark. The most obvious idiocy here is the contention that sacrificing many lives and immense resources to replace an (admittedly awful) secular dictatorship that posed no threat to the United States and had no substantial relationship with anti-American terrorism with an Islamist quasi-state was somehow in the American national interest (an implausible enough claim in 2003, and bordering on the insane at this late date.) And it's particularly rich given that, when their scaremongering about the dire threat posed by Iraq turned out to be wholly unfounded, the war's apologists began pretending that it was really a humanitarian campaign all along.

Admittedly, Goldberg is certainly right that the sectarian near-anarchy predictably created by the policy he advocated so vociferously is contrary to the American national interest. But in terms of defending an open-ended commitment to Iraq, this is neither here nor there unless there's some reason to believe that an ongoing presence in Iraq with a minor increase in troop levels can actually produce a strong, stable state. Goldberg doesn't actually have an argument about why we should believe this, which is not surprising since there is in fact no reason to believe that this is viable. It's true that the situation in Iraq is bad for the Iraqi people and bad for the interests of the United States, but this was a reason not to start the war, not a reason to continue it indefinitely when it shows no signs of producing a good outcome.

--Scott Lemieux at Tapped.

Just because you're paranoid...

2007-01-25T03:53:00.000-05:00

...dosen't mean they're not out to get you.

When money is no object

2007-01-25T00:09:00.000-05:00

Roger Ailes highlights this blurb from Warren Bass [no link]:

[Dinesh] D'Souza, the author of the bestselling Illiberal Education, has no particular expertise on terrorism, which may explain why he writes twice that there are U.S. troops in Mecca (someone should probably alert Bob Gates) or why he thinks that President Reagan's 1986 airstrikes on Libya "convinced Qadafi to retire from the terrorism trade," despite the bombing of Pan Am 103 by Libyan agents two years later. But D'Souza's inexperience doesn't explain why he so badly misreads bin Ladenist ideology, despite the peppering of jihadist quotes that he uses to lend the book a sense of authority.

To which Roger asks: "Is there any amount of incompetence of dishonesty which will deny a book contract to a right-winger?"

If you want an answer to that question I recommend David Brock's Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative. It's full of informative little anecdotes about how little is needed for a right-winger to secure a book deal. Factual accuracy is not as essential as one might think (or hope). Personally, I can't wait until this one is released.

[Update] I was not recommending you actually purchase either book. You can always grab them at your local library; no need to give either of them one dime if you don't want to.

Priorities

2007-01-24T23:32:00.000-05:00

In a display of savage corporatism, Senate Republicans are filibustering the minimum wage increase until Democrats lard the bill with tax cuts for businesses. Over the last six years, of course, businesses have gotten, literally, hundreds of billions in tax breaks. Congress hasn't raised the minimum wage in a decade.

-Ezra, posting at Tapped.

One commenter complains Ezra is being hypocritical, complaining about tactics by Republicans that the Democrats have been using for the previous six years. Whether Ezra is complaining about Tactics or Substance aside, Ezra's point is valid: the Corporate aspect of the Republican party seems hell-bent on ensuring that businesses endure absolutely no risk whatsoever. At point are you simply rewarding businesses for failure and bad business practices? At what point are you removing any motivation for businesses to do business well?

Link of the Day:

2007-01-24T22:28:00.000-05:00

Hell's Handmaiden.

"I think you're out of line"

2007-01-24T22:01:00.000-05:00

... so sayeth Dick Cheney to Wolf Blitzer's question about his lesbian daughter's pregnancy:

BLITZER: []your daughter, Mary. She's pregnant. All of us are happy she's going to have a baby. You're going to have another grandchild. Some of the — some critics are suggesting — for example, a statement from someone representing Focus on the Family, "Mary Cheney's pregnancy raises the question of what's best for children. Just because it's possible to conceive a child outside of the relationship of a married mother and father doesn't mean that it's best for the child." Do you want to respond to that?

Well, Dick, and I use that word with all possible connotations intended, you are head of a party that in no way considers itself out of line to make decisions about the family make-up and sex lives of the rest of America. In fact, your party specifically targeted those who consider themselves the moral authorities on such subjects, and consider it a priority to reshape America into their vision, a vision which does not include your daughter's lesbian lifestyle, much less her venture into lesbian parenthood. Oddly, traits which are demonized in liberals and democrats are rarely commented on negatively when found in conservatives and republicans (aka - The Base).

Let us also not forget that Mary Cheney is in no way a private citizen. She has been active in GOP politics for quite a while. She made the choice to be a public figure. One might think the GOP heavyweights would have much preferred she keep her lifestyle quiet, but such thoughts imply a notion that republicans consider hypocrisy to be a bad thing. Instead they wear it like a badge of honor; thus we have people like Ted Haggard and Mark Foley, living double lives in order to please their base and hold on to power.

Sorry, Dick. You wanted the fundie vote. You got it, and all that comes with it.

Why do they hate us again?

2007-01-24T21:07:00.000-05:00

In the mind of the President (or at least in his words - I don't know which is worse to be honest), the terrorsts hate us for our freedoms. I have to wonder which freedoms specifically the President believes we are hated for. It certainly isn't the freedom to question your leaders or elected officials. That apparently is giving aide and comfort to the enemy. How can the terrorists hate us for our freedoms but be emboldened when we exercise them? I doubt the terrorists are sitting around watching CNN, waiting for Jack Murtha to give them the motivation to strike.

In a "time of war" however such questioning of officials is of bad taste, if not traitorous we are told. Of course Congress seems to have given the White House the go ahead to unilaterally define the scope of war, and based on a recent interview of Chuck Hagel (R-NE) by GQ Magazine, they had very big ambitions. The Domino Theory has been put to rest by reality but the White House still insists that they and they alone know the best direction of the United States foreign policy, Congress be damned. I would argue however that "times of war" are when it is most appropriate to question your elected officials. When someone is out killing in your name, you might find yourself with an opinion or two on the subject.

I can't help but wonder at what point Joe Lieberman truly jumped the shark however. I would not be surprised if he was promised support for a Vice President run in '08 if he eased off pressure on the White House. Thus we have him declining to hold hearings on the Bush Administration's Katrina fumbles, as well as his chiding of opponents of the Surge (or at least those who voice their opposition publicly - emboldening the terrorists and all). Glenn Greenwald says what I couldn't figure out how to put into words:

Whether Lieberman accused "surge" opponents of giving "comfort" to the enemy or merely "encouraging" them (and it looks increasingly like it was "encouragmenet," though still nothing truly definitive), Chuck Hagel's impassioned response applies just as potently -- not only to Lieberman, but to all of those war supporters who think that what is one of our country's greatest strengths -- the fact that we debate important issues, rather than meekly submit to the Leader's will -- is something we should suppress because the Terrorists are emboldened by our disagreements.

For people who consistently argue the terrorists hate us for our freedoms, they sure do get upset when we exercise those freedoms. Why do President Bush and Joe Lieberman hate our freedoms?

The Christian Creeps

2007-01-20T12:13:00.000-05:00

With all the talk of phantom Liberal Elitists by the millionaire thinktank intellectuals and billionaire oil dynasties in the Republican party I sometimes think the actual Liberal Elitists don't get their fair share of attention. I speak of course of James Wolcott, whose latest post discusses the phenomenon that is the Supposed Christian Conservative:

There's a subset of conservative bloggers that I've come to think of as Christian Creeps. Not the most elegant or endearing epithet, but there it is, the best I can do under the circumstances. These are bloggers who profess their faith in God and the efficacy of prayer and, once they wipe the piety off their upturned faces, turn around and fantasize about environmentalists dangling from nooses, taking up arms against rampaging Muslims, and unleashing nuclear genocide on Arab lands. Dorothy Day they're not. You can probably figure out who I'm talking about.

Yes James, we sure can.

About every hundred posts or so they remember they're supposed to be Christians and wander out of the Old Testament just long enough to forgive the Godless Liberal bloggers and commenters who attack their faith with such tools of the Devil as statistics and facts. That penance apparently frees them up to unleash the standard Fire and Brimstone in the remaining 99 posts. Such are the benefits of being God's chosen bloggers I surmise.

Go read the whole thing.

I suppose Brownie is lying too

2007-01-20T11:27:00.000-05:00

The list of "former disgruntled Bush Administration officials" is getting longer. We can now add former FEMA director Michael Brown to the list. Apparently, taking a bullet for the Bush Administration isn't as easy as Scooter Libby makes it look.

Brown told a group of graduate students Friday that some in the White House had suggested the federal government should take charge in Louisiana because Blanco was a Democrat, while leaving Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a Republican, in control in his state.

Brown, speaking at the Metropolitan College of New York, said he had recommended to President Bush that all 90,000 square miles along the Gulf Coast affected by the devastating hurricane be federalized — a term Brown explained as placing the federal government in charge of all agencies responding to the disaster.

"Unbeknownst to me, certain people in the White House were thinking, 'We had to federalize Louisiana because she's a white, female Democratic governor, and we have a chance to rub her nose in it,'" he said, without naming names. "'We can't do it to Haley (Barbour) because Haley's a white male Republican governor. And we can't do a thing to him. So we're just gonna federalize Louisiana.'"

Say it with me now: Shocked. SHOCKED!

This just in: Hillary.

2007-01-20T11:10:00.000-05:00

Links later.

This is a Test

2007-01-20T06:49:00.000-05:00

This is a test of the Emergency Blogcasting System. It is only a test.

Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

YCMTSU

2007-01-20T06:25:00.000-05:00

You Can't Make This Shit Up.

Twilight of the Right-Wing Blogs

2007-01-19T22:59:00.000-05:00

It doesn't take long in bloggerland to come across the reoccuring names: the two David Sirotas, for example, or my favorite, the two John Coles. Juan Cole is an expert in middle east studies, while John Cole is a professor of some sort (I've never found out his subjects). John Cole is also a republican, one of the few on the net who have come to criticize the GOP (and in a fierce way). Naturally, John has received no small amount of criticism from various factions of the right-wing blogs who have yet to put down the kool-aid and go into detox.

John Cole's latest catch is the Senate Republicans killing the ethics reform offered by Democrats by attaching poison pills (among them the line item veto found unconstitutional in the 90s) to the ethics reform package, which they knew the Democrats would never pass.

Last night in the Senate, and for the second time in a week, Republicans scored a victory for spending restraint when they forced the majority Democrats to object to a vote on an earmark reform amendment. The amendment to S.1, The Ethics and Lobby Reform Bill, was offered by Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) and would incorporate the “A Second Look at Wasteful Spending Act of 2007” into the legislation.

***

The fact is that Democrats object to the Gregg amendment and the DeMint amendment because they aren’t really against earmarks. They only wanted to campaign on the issue, not actually do anything substantive about it. Now that they are in the majority, they want all the perks of office; and that includes easier access to taxpayer dollars for their constituencies and their re-election chances. But feisty Senate Republicans are not letting them have their pork and eat it too. So, Sen. Reid, Sen. Durbin and the rest of the Senate Democrats are obstructing their own bill and explaining. And, as we know in politics, when you’re explaining, you’re losing.

In the fantasyland of Red-State (and the post above is a perfect example), every word they put on their blog will be taken at face value, and no investigating of the world will be undertaken of any kind. No one will ever take 30 seconds to read that rag the Washington Post for example:

Senate Republicans scuttled broad legislation last night to curtail lobbyists’ influence and tighten congressional ethics rules, refusing to let the bill pass without a vote on an unrelated measure that would give President Bush virtual line-item-veto power.

The bill could be brought back up later this year. Indeed, Democrats will try one last time today to break the impasse. But its unexpected collapse last night infuriated Democrats and the government watchdog groups that had been pushing it since the lobbying scandals that rocked the last Congress. Proponents charged that Republicans had used the spending-control measure as a ruse to thwart ethics rules they dared not defeat in a straight vote.

The low level of respect with which the bloggers at Red-State hold their readers is astonishing. The assumption that their readers will never see through such falsehoods, never tire of such blatantly childish political games, and will never read or watch another news outlet that will reveal Red-State's version of events to be the flat-out lie that it is, borders on the delusional.

John Cole has a suggestion for his fellow republicans (and his fellow bloggers):

So rather than be a petulant chilkd (like the Senate Republicans), I would accept I am not in the majority anymore, and vote for the ethics reform they are advancing. While not perfect, it is better than what is out there now. Instead, the GOP has chosen to block it and has delivered us:

NOTHING.

They, however, have an issue and rightwing blogs can now babble incessantly (as Red State already as) about how the Republicans are the real reformers. How do they get the title of real reformers? By blocking the reform package.

Up is down. Black is white. You don’t need to worry unless you are doing something wrong.

The inability of the right-wing to address such issues honestly is but one reason the Republicans lost control of congress in November. Sticking to such messages as Stay the Course worked fine when it was only the dirty hippie godless liberals showing concern. It doesn't exactly help on voting day however to be calling your own constituents traitors and questioning their patriotism. When Republicans started showing concern over the Iraq war that strategy fell apart, and thus we have Tony Snow trying to tell the nation "we've never been Stay the Course" with a straight face.

(and if you want to know how the republican tactic of saying anyone who opposes illegal warrantless wiretapping is a traitor worked out, just ask Alberto Gonzales).

This is where the reality-based blogosphere runs into one of its hurdles: how to tell between the right-wing bloggers who are purposely lying, substituting propoganda for facts, and between the right-wing bloggers who are batshit insane. The former are pathetic and desperate, while the latter are sad and dangerous. While the ones who simply sell their souls for power can be proved wrong with 30 seconds on Google, the ones who are batshit insane operate from a position of considering themselves to be always correct on an issue. Any attempt to disagree with them in any meaningful way is defined by the crazies as pure partisan hackery. What's to discuss, when you're obviously so completely, utterly right on an issue?

Take a look at this reaction from Blogs for Bush, after a round of commenters winning arguments ended up being banned (right after a post complaining about Democrats and censorship no less):

Lefties:

This is, as I'm sure you're aware, BLOGS FOR BUSH.

There are plenty of places out there where you can post overwrought appeals to emotion and hatred of Chimpy McSmirk Bushitler. We here at Blogs for Bush, however, have a moral obligation to not allow the spreading of lies - so don't bother trying to post lies (as a handy reminder: if what you are about to try and post makes it out that President Bush is the spawn of Satan, then it is a lie...remember, Bush is not Satan...you can disagree with him, but you shouldn't hate him...if you do hate him, you're probably either a progenitor of lies, or someone gullible enough to fall for them).

We also have a deep and abiding respect for President Bush - Blogs for Bush wasn't started up by people who thought that President Bush was a so/so kinda President. We really do think he's quite good - if we wanted to read an endless stream of insults to the President, we'd go over to Daily Kos or DU.

Finally, you ain't paying for this blog - this blog is provided free of charge to all who wish to participate, but participation is on our terms, not yours - this is not a free speech zone...America is, but this blog ain't. If you want to be absolutely able to say whatever you please, then pony up for your own blog and you will find B4B right in your corner defending your right to speak your piece. On your own dime, not ours.

There is no room for dissent with bloggers of this mentality, and there is no room for progressives in their version of America. They do their best to restrict the reality of those who disagree with Bush into two, and only two, categories: Liars or Fools. The true reality of Blogs for Bush is it is in no way a blog. It is propoganda, and propoganda inevitably fails, as do all political movements based on it. The right-wing will continue to decline until it replaces sound-bites and ideology with reality-based policy.

I'm in no rush to see this decline end however. Though a cornered animal is a dangerous animal, it is still a cornered animal, and it will be ended. Meanwhile, the 2008 outlook is great for Democrats in no small part to the conservative meltdown, so take as long as you need (through 2008 would be great).

Hey Iraq...

2007-01-16T18:33:00.000-05:00

"...I know I said we were coming to Iraq to find WMD, disarm Saddam and return the country back to its people, but we've decided to stay a little longer and use your country as a battlefield. You see, we want your country to endure all the terrorist attacks, the bombings and the killings, and we want your streets to be lined with blood so our streets can remain pure and untouched. I sincerely hope you appreciate this, and will in no way be motivated to start a counter-insurgency. Thanks!"

-George W. Bush, when saying "We're fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here."

Maybe Condi LIKES being single? HeLLO.

2007-01-15T22:24:00.000-05:00

Oh My God! Barbara Boxer told the world Condi's dirty little secret... she's not married! She doesn't have any children! How could Boxer bring up such shameful aspects of Condi's life? Don't you think Condi's already ashamed enough? To be her age, and still without a good man, a bun in the oven, and a picket fence? I mean, I'm sure if it were Hillary Rodham in that position the fundies would be just as upset about such shameful airings of her personal life.

Does this remind anyone else of the Mary Cheney incident? Liberals stating facts about conservatives that conservatives are supposed to be ashamed of? Did any of these conservatives bother to ask Condi if she's not happy being a single woman with no children, or if Mary Cheney is happy living her life as a gay woman? Of course not. These are things to be ashamed of, and to be denounced in full when Democrats are guilty of them. Thus we have the Mark Foleys and the Ted Haggards living double-lives to please their base.

I don't think Condi is ashamed of her life or considers Barbara Boxer's factual statement to be anything other than just that. It's the fundies who deal in shame, shaming Americans for not living traditional conservative value lives, while excusing living examples of their contempt in their very own ranks. Hillary Clinton is no different than Condi in terms of ambition, except that Hillary Clinton is a wife and a mother. It's just that she is also a Democrat and therefore must be destoyed, hypocrisy be damned.

Link of the Day:

2007-01-14T14:05:00.000-05:00

You Park like an Asshole.

The White House is looking for a fight

2007-01-14T13:54:00.000-05:00

One of the key political tactics used by the current makeup of the conservative political machine is the victim card. The latest example of this has been the new Republican congress, now a minority. Before Congress had even been gaveled into session, various Republicans were whining about Democrats acting partisan, going back on promises, and not sharing enough power.

This tactic backfired over the previous two years. You can't play the victim card when you're the only party in power. Republicans were blaming Democrats for their mistakes, even though there weren't any in power anymore. The victim card worked well to usher the Republicans into power but once in power it was seen as juvenile, and as passing the buck. The Republican congress, as well as the White House, refused to take responsibility for their actions. They paid a price for this on November 7th.

The Republican congress has once again slipped into victim mode, but for the moment the public isn't buying it. A small but steadily growing group of Republicans, freed from having a congressional majority to defend, are slowly leaning towards moderation and starting to vote their consciences. The White House however has no intentions of budging an inch. In fact, they are looking for a fight, for several reasons.

The weeks preceeding the November mid-terms had the President of the United States travelling the campaign circuit and basically intimating that a vote for Democrats was a vote for terrorists. No punches were pulled. Karl Rove, Lynne Cheney and Laura Bush were all sent to various media outlets to question the patriotism of those who dared question their elected leaders. President Bush showed no reservations whatsoever in associating American citizens of another party with terrorists who murdered 3,000 Americans some five years ago.

All this was done when the Bush Administration had a lot to lose. Now that the Democrats are the majority in congress, the Bush Administration has absolutely nothing to lose.

What we've seen recently by the White House is a retreat on the social issues and an offensive on the political issues. Conservative judges have withdrawn their nominations. The controversial head of PBS, Ken Tomlinson, has asked that his name not be submitted for renomination, as has U.N. ambassador John Bolton. And then of course there's Donald Rumsfeld. All the controversial personalities who were seemingly put in power for no other reason than to send a big Screw You to the Democrats have systematically been removed from the spotlight. Thus the Democrats have less ammo to use against the White House.

On the core issues of Executive power however, the Bush Administration is surging forward. Domestic spying has been expanded. Powers such as the opening of Americans' private mail have been assumed. The Pentagon is assuming more control over operations traditionally undertaken by the CIA and FBI. And reports have begun leaking that reveal the Bush Administration is craving a constitutional battle with the Democrats. This has Cheney's fingerprints all over it.

Polls consistently show the President scores highest on the issues of terrorism and domestic security. Whenever 9/11 comes up, the President's numbers go up, and this is exactly where the White House is trying to steer the national conversation.

The recent raids on Iranian diplomats, the military excursions in Somalia and President Bush's recent threats towards Iran and Syria are all part of a calculated PR campaign by the White House to steer the conversation towards the issues which are most likely to benefit the White House. This is bait being laid out, with the hopes that the Democrats will bite. It also serves to drown out the thusfar successful execution of the Democrat's 100 hour agenda in Congress. Stealing the spotlight from the Democrats is a favorite tactic of the Bush Administration.

In hindsight, it seems obvious that the Bush Administration was never going to just pull out of Iraq. Doing so would send a message that the White House was giving up control of the country to the Democratic congressional majority and effectively end the Bush Administration right then and there. President Bush has no intention of asking congress for permission to escalate Iraq or to attack Iran. The White House will simply do as it chooses, and would in fact welcome an attempt by the Democrats to discontinue funding or end whatever military excusions it may seek to pursue.

It is the victim card once again. The White House is looking for a fight with the Democrats, but for the victim card to truly work with the public, the Democrats must be seen as starting the fight. The White House can't just sit back and wait, hoping the Democrats will screw up at some point. The 2008 landscape looks too good for Democrats and too bad for Republicans to take that chance. The White House is seeking to beat the Democrats with the power of the Presidency, and there's no better way than with a battle over terrorism, domestic security and Executive power.

It's going to be a rough couple of years. I hope the Democrats are up to it. They're going to have a fight on their hands sooner or later, whether they want one or not. It's the only way the White House can regain its influence, and the only way the republicans can regain control of congress is 2008.

Minimum wage hike passes House

2007-01-11T06:49:00.000-05:00

...and on to the Senate.

After a heated e-mail exchange with a longtime friend on the minimum wage, we both came to two conclusions:

1) True, raising the minimum wage does increase costs, but if your business were to buckle under from such a small increase in costs, chances are it was going to buckle under anyway. Such a small profit margin cannot substain a business.

2) Though your employees are now taking home a greater share of your profit, your customers are also taking home a greater share of their employers' profit, resulting in more money available to spend at your business, and thus rising costs are balanced by rising profits.

The option of letting the market even things out does not take into account local economies. It does not take into account businesses who have no intention of letting the market resolve their finances if they can do it for less. Wal-Mart is famous for playing cities against each other to see who can give them the sweetest deals in terms of tax breaks and anti-union laws.

Maybe in 10, 20, 30 years the market will usher in a competing company to a town with better wages and benefits, but the voters did not elect representatives for help in 30 years. They want help, often need help, yesterday. Free-market economics is not a high priority.

America -- still here!

2007-01-10T00:05:00.000-05:00

As I look past the rubble of my belongings to the devastation that engulfs my neighborhood... oh, wait, America survived a Congressman swearing in the Koran! Usually the end-timers describe such apocalyptic occurences with more fire and brimstone, but in the perpetual victimhood of being a Christian in America today, perhaps voluntarily swearing in on the Koran is the equivalent. If you were wondering what happens when hypocrisy meets irony...

Jamail Hussien, John Kerry and god-knows-who-else

2007-01-09T21:56:00.000-05:00

Jay Rosen explains.

Stuck in time

2007-01-09T21:11:00.000-05:00

David Niewart on the right's inability to let go of Vietnam and the 60s:

Actually, if liberals had in fact "desperately wanted to lose" the Iraq war [as they apparently did the Vietnam war], they'd have proceeded precisely as G.W. Bush has: half-assedly, with no exit strategy, and then incompetently at every turn thereafter.

But for some reason, wingnuts keep pretending that it's the left that wants to lose, when it's quite clear that the problem is that the right has no idea how to win.

England has religious fundamentalists too

2007-01-09T20:39:00.000-05:00

LONDON (Reuters) - Sweeping gay rights laws were upheld on Tuesday despite protests by faith groups.

A bid to block the rules in Northern Ireland, where they are already in place, failed in the House of Lords, by a majority of three to one, the BBC reported.

Faith groups, which say the legislation will force them to act against their religious beliefs, earlier delivered a petition to the Queen, while about 1,000 demonstrators staged a torch-lit protest outside parliament.

"Most of the people here are standing for freedom of conscience in the sense of 'if you believe something is wrong the law shouldn't make you do it,'" one protester, who asked to not to be named, told Reuters.

[We should go back to the good old days when an authority decided for us what was right or wrong and passed laws accordingly. This whole "not agreeing with what you say but defending your right to say it" crap is just so taxing.]

The legislation, a cornerstone of efforts to promote equal rights, would ban discrimination in the provision of goods and services on the basis of sexuality in a similar way to laws banning sex and race discrimination.

Christian opponents argue the laws are a major threat to their freedom of conscience and that they should not be penalised for acting according to their beliefs.

Gay rights campaigners say the proposals would simply extend existing anti-discrimination laws to homosexuals.

"It would not be acceptable in the areas of race, disability, age or religion or belief, and is not acceptable here. Either we hold human rights to be universal or we do not," said Andrew Copson, of the British Humanist Association.

Thomas Cordrey of the Lawyers' Christian Fellowship, which organised the rally, said the regulations did not strike the right balance and denied the group was homophobic.

"Christians have no desire to discriminate unjustly on the grounds of sexual orientation, but they cannot and must not be forced to actively condone and promote sexual practices which the Bible teaches are wrong."

[Psst. People have a right to sin. It's not illegal to be immoral. I know, the good old days of burning heretics at the stake was good times and all, but selectively choosing which portions of Leviticus isn't really en vogue anymore. Or should we petition against the abominations of eating shellfish or wearing clothing of two different threads? I'm sure those demonstrations are just around the corner.]

The Sexual Orientation Regulations came into force in Northern Ireland on January 1 but the government postponed their introduction in England and Wales until April because there was so much opposition.

Under the new laws, hotels could be prosecuted for refusing rooms to gay couples and parishes obliged to rent out halls for gay wedding receptions. Equally, gay bars would not be able to ban straight couples.

Human rights experts say the legislation would bring British law closer to that of other nations.

"It would be a major setback for the government if it failed to bring in these regulations," Robert Wintemute, professor of human rights at King's College, London told Reuters.

Civil partnerships for gay couples were introduced in December 2005, giving them the same rights as heterosexuals.

Memo to fundies: your rights end where my rights begin.

Santorum slips into irrelevancy

2007-01-09T20:15:00.000-05:00

There once was a time when being elected to Congress and being sent to Washington was an end goal. Now it seems to be a means to an end, that end being employment as a lobbyist or at a thinktank. Former Senator Rick Santorum has chosen the latter, marking his decent into complete irrelevancy:

Former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum has joined a conservative Washington think tank, where he will found and direct a program called "America's Enemies."

The program will study "threats posed to America and the West from a growing array of anti-Western forces that are increasingly casting a shadow over our future and violating religious liberty around the world," according to a statement from the Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he will be a senior fellow.

The center was established 30 years ago to apply moral principles derived from Christianity and Judaism to public policy issues. It is strongly, but not exclusively, associated with conservative Catholic intellectuals. Another of its senior fellows, George Weigel, is best known as the author of the most comprehensive biography of the late Pope John Paul II. Mr. Santorum, who served as a Pennsylvania senator from 1995 until this year, is an outspoken Catholic.

"In these perilous and uncertain times, I believe it is critical that we define the threats that confront America," Mr. Santorum said in a prepared statement.

"Without a clear definition and precise understanding of our enemies we cannot fight effectively and our own citizens become divided. It is my hope that the America's Enemies program at EPPC will help the American people -- including our leaders -- understand and communicate with clarity, honesty and consistency the enemies we face and the complex and enormous threat that they post to our lives and the freedoms we all enjoy."

Mr. Santorum has spoken previously on what he called "Islamic fascism" as the primary threat to the United States. In an article for Crisis magazine he defined it as "a radical, perverted form of Islam" that seeks world domination.

Some of the center's other programs include Evangelicals in Civic Life, Economics and Ethics, Jewish Studies and Islam and American Democracy. The latter studies the views and impact of American Muslims and seeks to give a platform to pro-democracy reformers within Islam.

While in the Senate Rick Santorum was a big fish, with political and cultural groupies hanging off his every word. No longer; his voice will be lost in the murmers of A13 editorials and presentations on C-SPAN2 presented in the wee hours in the morning.

Santorum will inevitably hasten his own decline when he begins to truly explore his mission statement. Defining the threat to America has been something Santorum has proven to be woefully ineffectual at, especially when it was beneficial to the White House. Mark my word; it will not be long before Islamic Fascism is put aside and replaced with a new enemy to America: far-left Americans. Pressure from the conservative base and Rick Santorum's own personal beliefs and desire for the spotlight will replace far-left Americans with liberal Americans in general. And on and on Santorum's slip will go, until he's sharing a hotel room with David Horowitz.

Who wants to bet some dough on this?

Dying for their Egos

2007-01-07T15:49:00.000-05:00

Digby catches McCain admitting what we already feared to be true:

Finally, a questioner lays it all on the line: "The war's the big issue," he says, adding, "Some kind of disengagement—it's going to have to happen. It's a big issue for you, for our party, in 24 months. It's not that long a time." McCain replies, "I do believe this issue isn't going to be around in 2008. I think it's going to either tip into civil war … " He breaks off, as if not wanting to rehearse the handful of other unattractive possibilities. "Listen," he says, "I believe in prayer. I pray every night." And that's where he leaves his discussion of the war this morning: at the kneeling rail.

On the way to our next stop, McCain tells me, "It's just so hard for me to contemplate failure that I can't make the next step."

There you have it. So because St John and Junior and the rest of these macho Republican heroes can't "face" failure, with or without an escalation, more Americans will have to die in the Iraq meatgrinder for their vanity. Jesus H. Christ.

Presented without comment.

Quote of the Day

2007-01-07T09:47:00.000-05:00

Steve Gilliard on troop rotations and multiple tours:

"How many times can you send a man out to die and expect him to come back alive?"

Democrats lost the war for America

2007-01-05T20:09:00.000-05:00

Just heard Jonathan Alter say on Olbermann's Countdown that if the Democrats don't support the President's troop surge, the republicans will adopt the line that Democrats lost the Iraq war for America.

Let's be clear: the Bush Administration will have lost the Iraq war for America. The Democrats will simply have ended it.

On the rise: MSNBC

2007-01-05T14:10:00.000-05:00

The past 12 months have been good to MSNBC, and so has Dan Abrams apparently. Many were left scratching their head when he went from legal show (think Greta or Nancy) to running the network. Rita Crosby's show disappeared, and Hardball and Countdown were capitalized upon. Tucker Carlson is a lightweight, but he is watchable while waiting for Hardball to come on. Similarly, viewers watching Countdown are led directly into Scarborough country, which has gone from forgettble to moderately respectable.

Of the three cable news outlets MSNBC is the only one that's gaining viewers. Fox News is becoming a conservative niche network and is not gaining new viewers as its old viewers, well, get older. CNN is still quite respectable but is also quite steril, for lack of a better word. I wish MSNBC would follow a Fox New's pattern of repeating it's three big 8pm to 11pm shows throughout the night so the nightowls and late-shifters wouldn't be shutout, but those "To Catch a Predator" episodes do bring in the numbers.

I have a sneaking suspicion that MSNBC will become a model for the next evolution of cable news networks.

Guilty pleasures, Star Trek style

2007-01-05T13:38:00.000-05:00

I like science fiction, especially space-based sci-fi. I like Farscape, Babylon 5 (both sci-fi channel originals) and I like Star Trek (except for Enterprise). And, I dare to admit, I was a huge fan of Star Trek Voyager.

One of the criticisms of Voyager was that Captian Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) was all over the map in terms of how she acted and what her beliefs were. This bothered Kate Mulgrew herself, and she (good-naturedly) blamed the writers.

It was inevitable however that the Voyager characters would be all over the map because of the very nature of Voyager's predicament. There is no infastructure around them. There is no Federation. There is no variable that the Voyager crew can react to.

In the other ST series, you could have a rogue Admiral out breaking the law and Janeway could be sent to stop him and let him know "this isn't how we do things in the Federation." Can't do that in Voyager however; the only constants in Voyager was the Voyager crew.

So all you Janeway haters, cut her some slack, will ya?

Obey me or else

2007-01-04T14:11:00.000-05:00

President Bush's definition of Bipartisanship seems to be "do what I say or else."

One would have thought his newfound concern for fiscal responsibility would have been addressed before year seven of his presidency; specifically when he had a republican congress that was White House friendly. Instead, President Bush eagerly signed into law every bill put in front of him, pork and all. Not once did he ask of the republican congress to exercise any measure of fiscal responsibility. The republicans needed that pork to get re-elected. Instead we get Cheney, saying "Reagan proved deficits don't matter. We won the midterm. This is our due."

The only thing that has changed between now and the previous six years is that the President's party is no longer controlling congress. The only conclusion that can be made is that the President is playing partisan politics while instructing the Democrats to do no such thing. It's not unlike Cheney's statement; fiscal responsibility is a campaign slogan, nothing more. Once you win elections you're free to be as fiscally irresponsible as you'd like. The politics of the issue are all that matter.

The true purpose of the recent republican PR blitz is to control the definition of what bipartisanship should be. After all, there are varying degrees of bipartisanship, and the republicans are using this pre-emptive strike to set the level of bipartisanship so high that anything less from Democrats than a 50/50 power split will be labelled as partisan hackery, all the way through 2008.

The majority of republicans left over from the Gingrich revolution are only interested in power, and that's exactly what they don't have as a minority party. They're not going sit idly by and accept Democratic scraps, and being labelled Hypocrites does not at all effect them. They wear it as a badge of honor. Now that they are the in the minority again the victim card is out in full force, yet again, even before the 110th Congress has come to session. Playing victim is what they're best at; it's the actual governing they need to work on.

Russell's Paradox

2007-01-03T22:06:00.000-05:00

If a barber shaves only and all the men in his village who don't shave themselves, does he shave himself?

The Republicans don't really want Bipartisanship

2007-01-03T21:44:00.000-05:00

With the republicans and the president running around squawking about the need for bipartisanship in Washington after the election, one would be tempted to label this as another demonstration of Projection. The republicans know very well how they treated the democrats the past six years and have no desire to be treated the same way. They are only in D.C. for the power, something they've demonstrated the past six en mass, and as a minority party they have none.

It's not really bipartisanship the republicans are after though. It's the level of bipartisanship the republicans are after. What they really want is Equality, to not be a minority party. This whole media blitz is a pre-emptive strike to give republicans sole custody of the definition of bipartisanship, and they are trying to set that level so impossibly high that if Democrats do anything other than share power 50/50 they will be labeled partisan hacks all the way through 2008.

Democrats should not continually be caught off-guard by such media antics. It was on demonstration as recently as a few months ago, when Nancy Pelosi was led to take impeachment off the table. The merits or faults of that decision notwithstanding, it is still republicans controlling the debate. If the republicans are the only ones talking about bipartisanship then they are the only ones defining bipartisanship, and they will not define it as anything Democrats could live with.

Dems need to get with the program.

Where the Democrats go from here

2007-01-03T01:08:00.000-05:00

At this point there aren't many people left who are undecided on George Bush or his presidency. If, after all the revelations and the cronyism and the incompetence and the fabrications, a person still supports Bush, then there is nothing more that will change their mind, save for the president performing an abortion in a church before marrying a gay man and moving to France. It's just not going to happen.

The administration has shaved off as many 2nd-tier employees as it could, and hoisted as much blame and guilt on their often willing shoulders as possible. You don't get much higher than removing Donald Rumsfeld from power without instigating a constitutional crisis, and Bush does not have near the small amount of integrity that allowed Nixon to resign, even if Nixon's sole goal was self-preservation.

Bush does not second-guess himself or his decisions, and Rove, Cheney and Rice have no modivation to persuade him to do otherwise. That leaves the fate of the country in the hands of the Legislative branch, which just happens to now be controlled by the Democratic party after what can only be called a historic election, despite often vehement objections of such from supporters of the party recently voted out of power.

Let's face it: conservatism only works as a campaign slogan. Once conservatives get into power their constituents expect them to use the resources of the federal government to help them and their communities. In other words, pork and welfare. While I personally don't mind that some of my tax dollars go to help Americans in other states, I do wish they wouldn't criticize me to my face while taking my money, but hypocrisy has been part of the heart of man as long as any other trait. It's certainly not going to disappear during my lifetime.

The Democrats have two years to sell the current generation of voters on liberalism. Many conservatives disagree with liberalism in principle while greedily utilizing the benefits that liberalism provides in practice. What we must do is get past the spin and create our own; to unite Principle and Practice. Democrats need not change all the minds of the predominately conservative voters. Just enough to continue their status as a congressional majority will do.

Much of the conservatives' pre-election campaigning seemed to consist of the "but the democrats are worse" mantra, especially as the realities of the Bush administration and their congressional republican lackeys permeated the mentality of average voters more and more. It would have been great if it had worked, but in failing to continue the republican majority in congress this "democrats are worse" mantra has actually backfired. It has set the bar for the Democrats so low that all they have to do is go the next two years without setting the building on fire for 2008 to be a successful year for them.

The Democratic party has a chance to act like Democrats. The Bush presidency is basically over, and his stubborness and lack of inflection will make the tough choices Democrats will face all the easier. Democrats can act like Democrats, or the can become Republican-lite. Pandering to the religious vote will yield only modest vote gains. The power of the religious right will fade as the realities of the impossibility of their turning America into God's Kingdom gets buried ever deeper under the weight of Supreme Court rulings. They will never, ever vote for the godless hippies and the time and money spent trying to court them is time and money that could be spent courting moderates.

Democrats might as well go for broke in the 110th Congress. It wasn't just Iraq that gave them the majority. It was cronyism, imcompetence and the sheer narcisism of an administration that told half of America they were traitors for the sin of questioning authority. Any number of items are available for Democrats to focus on that would be both good for America and good for Democrats, not the least of which is New Orleans. Nancy Pelosi's 100 hour plan is great, but she, Reid and the like had better have some ideas for hour 101 or their status as majority leaders will be short-lived.

This nonsense about it not being good for the country or the Democrats if they choose to investigate how we got into Iraq in the first place is just that: nonsense. The William Kristols and Bill Bennetts may not want to focus on those pesky constitutional restrictions that keep America from becoming an Empire and keep Bush from snatching Caesar's crown, but it is vital that this country set out clear guidelines for how it goes to war and how the greatest military in the history of Man is unleashed. If Democrats don't go for the jugular of every republican mis-step and legal ambiguity put forth the past six years the republican machine will pick up right where it left off in 2008, no doubt with St. McCain at the helm.

Democrats might as well spend the next two years being Democrats. They may win in 2008, but they may also lose, and they will be better for having lost pushing legislation and policies they believed in than for having lost tiptoeing over the Beltway norm and trying not to hurt the White House's feelings. No such niceties would granted them if the political roles were reversed. The past six years have proven as much.

Test, Disregard

2006-03-14T19:43:00.000-05:00

$200 Billion for New Orleans? From where?

2005-09-25T17:59:00.000-04:00

Not from the pork-laden Transportation Bill apparently:

Rep. Don Young (R-AK) is a self-proclaimed “little oinker” and aspires to be the “chief porker.” As chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Commitee, he’s ensured that the six-year $295 billion transportation bill is “stuffed like a turkey” with $721 million in projects for Alaska, including $223 million for the infamous “bridge to nowhere.”

But don’t you dare suggest that money is pork, especially if you’re sitting in his office.

REPORTER: Isn’t there a bunch of stuff in that highway bill, at least 24 billion dollars, that could be taken out and used for the people in New Orleans and Mississippi and the places that were affected?

REP. YOUNG: No! That money is not there! That money is for transportation! That is not added pork. See, that’s why the whole media — Wall Street Journal, yourself, respectfully, you know, Sam Donaldson — don’t know what the hell you are talking about. This is grandstanding by individuals that don’t know what they’re talking about. I’ll go back to that. It’s ignorance and stupidity.

It's amazing. Fiscal conservatives are now using President Bush's projected spending for Katrina as a reason to gut long-despised programs from the budget as a means of cutting costs. I know what you're thinking.... NOW they're interested in cutting costs, after five years. No, they're not going to raise taxes on Billionaires. That would be Un-American. Nor are they touching their pork projects. It's the poor and needy who will be left out in the cold (literally considering projected heating costs this winter) to fend for themselves.

Still waiting for that trickle-down effect, Neo-Hawks. The assumption that Millionaires and you're average business owner would take their tax cuts and tax breaks and immediately turn around and invest them in their employees in the form of lower heath insurance costs and higher salaries, as opposed to taking the profits and living off the interest, is the biggest scam fiscal conservatives played on the middle class.

PA ID controversy goes to court

2005-09-25T17:55:00.000-04:00

Intro:

PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania (Reuters) -- A new battle over teaching about man's origins in U.S. schools goes to court for the first time next week, pitting Christian conservatives against educators and scientists in a trial viewed as the biggest test of the issue since the late 1980s.

I for one will be watching this closely.

Right-Wing blogging about the Anti-War demonstrations

2005-09-25T17:49:00.000-04:00

Here's some cutting and pasting:

While about 100,000 aged hippies, anti-American socialists and assorted conspiracy-theorists gathered in DC for a hate-America fest,

The anti-war protestors aren't really anti-war - they are actually anti-American. I feel for those who are just misguided into the anti-war movement, but one has to face the fact that if you are within a country mile of the really horrible people of ANSWER, then you are besmirched with the muck of treason. The broad mass of the American people will never sign on to a group which not only says that the war should end, but calls our efforts to date part of a criminal conspiracy.

This crowd of immature has-beens, wants one thing - America to lose. Their goal is to destroy it as it was, and turn it into the idiocy preached by thousand of godless communist loving professors who have hated this country from day one. These useful idiots have no idea that if they win - what they get won't resemble anything like they think. Be careful what you wish for liberals - if you succeed in taking America down, there will be no room for your beloved liberalism in the new order. That is your puppet master's dirty little secret!

Dregs, flotsam, and jetsam to be sure. Some are there because they believe the loony-left's propaganda. Some are there because they work for the overthrow of America - like A.N.S.W.E.R. Some are there because they, like most moonbats, like to swarm - they delude themselves into thinking that their paltry numbers mean strength or unity. And a large percent of the young males, I suspect, were just looking for a party and some loose chicks - which I'm sure they found in abundance. This is like the jackpot for college-aged guys who want a female who subscribes to the hedonistic beliefs of the left, and if anything goes wrong, she'll happily get an abortion. What could be better?

Makes ya feel all warm and fuzzy, don't it? And do you think there's any room for Liberals in their vision of America?

Me either.

Keeping my Tin Foil hat close at hand

2005-09-25T17:48:00.000-04:00

Just read.

Back to Blogging

2005-09-25T17:46:00.000-04:00

I love the internet.

Seeing "Liberal Conspiracies" Everywhere

2005-09-17T11:10:00.000-04:00

This post from a conservative blog:

A "--" reader emailed to inform me he's tested out Google's new Blog Search tool, and tried entering the term "President Bush." He reveals, "I was surprised (not really) that "--" did not [come up] until page 7."

I tried it myself, with the term 'President Bush' in quotation marks, and I had to go to page 10 to see the first link to "--".

Search queries for "George W. Bush" and "George Bush" produced worse results, as "--" was not within the first 10 pages of results (I stopped looking after that.)

It is a bit suspect when "--" comes up so late, or not at all after a few basic queries relating to Bush.

A day or so earlier I had tested the new blog search engine and immediately determined it was not only a bad search engine, but ridiculously slanted to the left in its results. Disappointing, but not unexpected.

Despite meeting the criteria for inclusion as a news source on Google News, "--" has been repeatedly denied because we are a pro-Bush blog... no they didn't tell me that was the reason, but considering they kept changing their reasons every time I proved "--" met their stated criteria, it's not hard to figure out what was going on.

Speaking of Google News, one would think that the launching of this new blog search engine would mean they'll start purging all blogs as news sources from Google News. Some of the blogs that have slipped through the cracks and made it as news sources have proven to make using Google News more frustrating when looking for actual news stories.

Google's Blog Search certainly has potential... But it is in serious need of improvement.

I have no doubt that Google has a secret department whose job is to thoroughly review all of the millions of blogs in the world, determine their political leaning, and adjust their search tool accordingly. What other explaination could their be?

Susie's grab bag - 3 of 3 (she catches all the good stuff)

2005-09-17T11:00:00.000-04:00

Bush now says he wants to rebuild New Orleans with federal dollars. But for four and a half years, he has embarrassed even fellow Republicans by his annual proposals to slash Community Development Block grants. He talks now of federal accounts of up to $5,000 for job training, education and child care expenses for evacuees. Yet before Katrina, he has proposed to slash job training programs, adult literacy programs and let his own No Child Left Behind program go underfunded by billions of dollars a year. Nearly every state in the nation is either suing the government or complaining about having to follow unfunded mandates.

Bush says he will now create a Gulf Opportunity Zone to stimulate business, ‘’including minority-owned enterprises.” But he also suspended the Davis-Bacon act for Katrina rebuilding, meaning that contractors need not pay the prevailing wage for laborers. Bush says he wants to ‘’help lower-income citizens in the hurricane region build new and better lives.” But between relaxing wage rules for the CEOs and heading a Republican Party that has for eight years blocked a rise in the $5.15 federal minimum wage, Bush’s plan to rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf Coast will squeeze yet more pulp out of the poor.

Bush proclaimed that we are about to witness ‘’one of the largest reconstruction efforts the world has ever seen.” For that to happen, he will have to become everything he has not been for his first four and a half years. That is only possible if he does things like drop his tax cut program or end the needless war in Iraq.

Bush says Katrina was cruel and wasteful. He was right in a way he did not intend. Katrina laid bare the cruel waste of so much of his presidency.

article here. Susie's link here.

Susie's grab bag - 2 of 3

2005-09-17T10:57:00.000-04:00

The President suspended wage standards for workers on the Gulf Coast before he declared a national emergency. That means he was so focused on cutting the wages of people who’d be returning to the Gulf Coast to rebuild their lives and their communities that, in order to hasten the suspension, he failed to follow the law. And at the same time the White House was cutting workers’ wages, it was busy awarding no-bid contracts. The President has proven once again that he’s more interested in governing for the few than in governing for all of us.

The President’s pay cut affects tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of Americans who desperately need a decent income to rebuild their lives. People working construction jobs in the Gulf Coast might only have earned $7 or $8 in the first place; now, the only protection left for them is the federal minimum wage, which is a disgraceful $5.15 an hour because Republicans repeatedly refuse to increase it.

What the President has done is immoral.

article here. Susie's link here.

Susie's grab bag - 1 of 3

2005-09-17T10:52:00.000-04:00

AUSTIN – White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove personally called the Texas secretary of state about a newspaper story quoting a staff lawyer about whether Mr. Rove was eligible to vote in the state.

The lawyer was subsequently fired.

Secretary of State Roger Williams said that he decided to dismiss the lawyer after talking with Mr. Rove but that the White House adviser didn’t request that he do so.
“Absolutely not,” said Mr. Williams, a longtime supporter of President Bush and a major GOP fundraiser.

article here. Susie's link here.

It is Curious, don't you think?

2005-09-17T10:48:00.000-04:00

Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) penned a letter to Bush Attorney General Alberto Gonzales Wednesday asking why the Justice Department was able to successfully prosecute a teenager for hacking into Paris Hilton's cell phone, but has yet to fully investigate two Republican staffers who hacked into the Senate Democratic Judiciary computer system, RAW STORY has learned.

The Massachusetts teenager was sentenced to 11 months in juvenile detention earlier this week for hacking into the hotel heiress' cell phone and other corporate computer systems.

Durbin refers to two Republican Judiciary committee staffers who were caught hacking into confidential memorandums between Democratic Senators and their attorneys in April 2004. The case was referred to the New York Justice Department, but has never come to fruition.

One of the men involved, Manuel Miranda, has now gone on to become the head of a coalition of grassroots conservative organizations involved in judicial issues and is a columnist for the Wall Street Journal. He also claims to advise members of Congress on judicial issues. He and the other Republican staff member, Jason Lundell, were dismissed from their Senate positions when the break-in was discovered.

MYDD on Healthcare

2005-09-16T23:13:00.000-04:00

While many have been understandably focused on Katrina, Roberts, and Iraq lately, some interesting information has come out recently shedding some light on the healthcare situation in this country. It's certainly not the most exciting story to be following right now, but it is, over the long run, perhaps the most important. An article in New York Newsday sums it up well.

Health insurance is becoming ever more unaffordable for workers.

Premiums have soared 73 percent since 2000, far outpacing the rate of inflation and wage growth, which grew at 3.5 percent and 2.7 percent respectively, according to the 2005 Annual Employer Health Benefits Survey, released yesterday.

Meanwhile, more companies are shifting costs to employees - requiring they shell out more for office visits, deductibles and drugs - and fewer are offering insurance coverage at all.

"Health insurance is becoming more expensive for the average person," said Gary Claxton, co-author of the survey, which was sponsored by the Kaiser Family Foundation and Health Research and Educational Trust.

And some the companies putting more of the burden on their employees aren't the ones you might think. Costco, which champions fair wages as good business practice, and Starbucks, which famously offers health coverage to employees who work more than twenty hours per week, are two companies that are looking to legislators to help them solve this problem.

To put their dilemma in perspective, Starbucks is now paying more for employee healthcare than they are raw materials for their coffee. This is a similar statistic to the one constantly cited about General Motors. About $1,500 of every GM vehicle sold goes to paying for employee and retiree healthcare costs. Figures like this are constantly cited by anti-labor conservatives, who view such healthcare expenditures as excessive and frivolous. But companies shouldn't have to choose between happy shareholders and healthy employees.

The Republican response to the healthcare crisis is nearly always blame shifting. The President and his cabal in Congress constantly claim that the rising cost of healthcare is due to malpractice lawsuits. There is overwhelming evidence however, to prove that is completely untrue. In fact, rising healthcare costs have been matched by record profits for private health insurers.

The only reason they blame malpractice suits is that trial lawyers are an overwhelmingly Democratic constituency. That's not news to anyone, but it is important to make the case, over and over again, until everyone understands it, that Republicans are completely devoid of innovative healthcare ideas at a time when it is one of the most pressing issues facing both the American people and economy. For them, the nation's healthcare problems just serve as another excuse to beat up Democrats.

This is also so important right now as it relates to the news that Democrats are now more trusted than Republicans on almost every major issue, from the economy to Iraq. Our party's largest advantage is in the area of healthcare. Only 28% of voters see the GOP as preferable to the Democrats when it comes to handling healthcare.

The GOP has thrown up road blocks and smoke screens every time the Democrats have pushed a national healthcare agenda. But now, with the problem continuing to get worse and the GOP having such little credibility on any issue, much less one that has historically favored Democrats, healthcare has to go right back to the top of our platform. It's no longer just a matter of doing what is morally right, making sure that healthcare is a right and not a privilege. It's also a matter of maintaining a competitive economic edge in global marketplace full of nations who wouldn't dream of putting the burden of healthcare on private business.

article here.

The main talking points behind the push for Tort Reform was that higher jury rewards are passed along to the insured as higher premiums. If that was indeed the case, however, why haven't we seen lower premiums after the passing of Tort Reform? Surely they weren't just lying through their asses, were they?

Bush Administration: economic priorities

2005-09-16T22:30:00.000-04:00

Making workers take home less pay, instead of making Federal Contractors lower their profit margins: check.

Making workers take home less pay, instead of making Private Corporations lower their profit margins: check.

Demoting personnel who criticize no-bid contracts: check.

Well... it's good to have priorities.

Insurance Companies looking out for #1

2005-09-16T19:17:00.000-04:00

From John Cole:

Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood sued insurers in his state Thursday for taking advantage of Hurricane Katrina victims and not covering damage to homes caused by flooding in the aftermath of the storm.

Mississippi Farm Bureau Insurance, State Farm Fire and Casualty Co., Allstate Property and Casualty Co., United Services Automobile Association and Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. were listed as defendants in the suit.

Hood’s office is investigating charges that claims adjusters from these companies offered homeowners affected by the storm $3,000 in personal expense money in return for signing waivers agreeing their home’s damage was from a flood and not from wind.

Apparently, the position of the insurance companies is that even though these folks thought they were buying hurricane insurance, the companies only will pay for wind damage (which is not surprising, because rarely do insurers in flood plains offer flood insurance*- you have to go through FEMA for that). The problem is, how do you prove your house was damaged by wind, and not the water? And what about the fact that the storm surge is caused by the wind?

Essentially, this is like having medical insurance that covers gunshot wounds, but doesn’t cover wounds by small pieces of metal that act as a projectile. It makes no sense, and, based on the information I have right now, it is an act of bad faith and is unconscionable.

And I am not impressed with claims this will ruin insurance companies. Years and years of record profits would suggest they have a way to rebound. Or they should find another way of making a living, something a touch more honorable. Like beating old women over the head on their way to church and stealing their purses.

*Post edited.

...but we should privatize more services currently handled by the Federal Government, because private corporations are notorious for putting the American People before profits.

If the GOP can't pull it off, no one can

2005-09-15T23:08:00.000-04:00

In his Prospect column this week, Matt wrote:

The other possibility is that Republicans are so convinced that government is inefficient and full of people who don't know what they're doing that it just doesn't occur to them to do it any other way.

In response, Wil Wilkinson said:

Naturally, Matt is implying that there is some other way to do it. But, no. The Republicans are right; that's just how government works. The problem with the Republicans is that they, being invested with power, are insufferably opportunistic hypocrites. They're not uniquely prone to cronyism. They're just prone to being in power, which is the enabling condition for the cronyism to which all political types aspire.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Clinton's nomination of the incredibly qualified James Lee Witt totally blow Wil's theory to shreds? Because considering the decidedly non-constant nature of the dynamic Wil describes, this strikes me as but another chapter of "Republicans who ideologically dislike government can't run it effectively and thus it stands to reason that no nobody else can either."

Ezra Klein's post here.

Specter: Foot in Mouth

2005-09-15T22:46:00.000-04:00

From AmericaBlog:

Reportedly, Specter's office is telling callers the following regarding Specter's opposition to the independent commission to investigate the Katrina mess:

I called Arlen Specter... phone person said-- quickly-- he supports bipartisan but not independent. Asked why not independent she said she didn't know.

Unfortunately, that's an outright lie. And I quote the Washington Post's coverage of the panel the Republicans ACTUALLY set up:

House and Senate GOP leaders announced the "Hurricane Katrina Joint Review Committee," which will include only members of Congress, with Republicans outnumbering Democrats by a yet-to-be-determined ratio.

I'm sorry, but it's not "bipartisan" if Republicans outnumber Democrats on the panel. That makes it a Republican panel with Democrats just bearing witness.

A bipartisan panel would be one with equal numbers of Dems and Republicans. Not to mention, is Congress expected to investigate its own role in Katrina? Are the Republicans really expected to give Bush a fair shake? Are the Dems? Neither party is going to be fully honest about Bush's deeds or misdeeds. This is a crock. Specter doesn't care about American lives, he only cares about partisan gain.

Call Senator Specters office and ask them why they're liars.

Specter, Arlen- (R - PA)
711 HART SENATE OFFICE BUILDING WASHINGTON DC 20510
(202) 224-4254
Web Form: www.specter.senate.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=ContactInfo.Home

More Compassionate Conservatives react to the Pledge ruling

2005-09-15T22:08:00.000-04:00

Yet this is EXACTLY how the present their own children. Apparently their kids are so "sheeplike" that they don't even have the backbone to not say "under God." And are so mindless that just hearing the words "under God" will indoctrinate them.
Congress shall make no law... nevermind. I'm sure he's read it.
This is what people are accusing their children of being when they bitch about "under God" being "coersive."
There's nothing coersive about it. Be a parent. Your kid is going to have to learn eventually that not everything they do will be popular and they'll just have to grow a backbone and deal with it.
Do what you're told. Never question authority.
They're going to have to learn to not just do what everyone else is doing.
If "under God" is coersive to your child then you better keep them away from cliffs. Because if everyone else started jumping you can be sure your own kid is going to as well.
Yes. The two are exactly the same. Your average human is born with an innate survival instict that might keep him or her from jumping off a cliff, even if others were doing it.
If "under God" is coersive then you better ban them from having friends who smoke or drink because your child is going to die of cancer at the age of 15 with a bottle of whiskey hanging out of their mouth.
No, liberals actually PREFER their elementary school kids having friends nursing Jack Daniel bottles during recess.
The world is going to say and do things you don't like. Live with it.
We're in power so you can go to Hell.
You can't legislate your house rules for the rest of the world just so your mindless, spineless child doesn't have any influences in their life that you wouldn't allow in your own home.
Now i'm going back to banning all books in my local library that deal with any influences I wouldn't allow in my home.

To claim to be an atheist you are really stating you know all things about everything in this universe and any other universe that might exist. No one can say that truthfully.
Except us Christians. Stay off our turf.

If the poor athiest kids are offended, it's up to their parents to EXCUSE them, not END the practice for all. As a minority, I want minority rights protected, but there is protection and tyranny. This type of ruling is just one group oppressing the majority.
Declaring it illegal to force teenagers to pledge their allegiance to a nation under God actually oppresses those who do believe in God. Makes sense to me.

Some Sanity on the Pledge

2005-09-15T22:04:00.000-04:00

Blogenlust is on it:

An important fact to know before the shitstorm over the pledge of allegiance begins: The "under God" clause was only added to the pledge in the 1950s.

Does this remind you of anything?

The efforts to bring God into the state reached their peak during the so-called "religious revival" of the 1950s. It was a time when Norman Vincent Peale grafted religion onto the era's feel-good consumerism in his best-selling The Power of Positive Thinking; when Billy Graham rose to fame as a Red-baiter who warned that Americans would perish in a nuclear holocaust unless they embraced Jesus Christ; when Secretary of State John Foster Dulles believed that the United States should oppose communism not because the Soviet Union was a totalitarian regime but because its leaders were atheists.

Hand in hand with the Red Scare, to which it was inextricably linked, the new religiosity overran Washington. Politicians outbid one another to prove their piety. President Eisenhower inaugurated that Washington staple: the prayer breakfast. Congress created a prayer room in the Capitol. In 1955, with Ike's support, Congress added the words "In God We Trust" on all paper money. In 1956 it made the same four words the nation's official motto, replacing "E Pluribus Unum." Legislators introduced Constitutional amendments to state that Americans obeyed "the authority and law of Jesus Christ."

The campaign to add "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance was part of this movement. It's unclear precisely where the idea originated, but one driving force was the Catholic fraternal society the Knights of Columbus. In the early '50s the Knights themselves adopted the God-infused pledge for use in their own meetings, and members bombarded Congress with calls for the United States to do the same. Other fraternal, religious, and veterans clubs backed the idea. In April 1953, Rep. Louis Rabaut, D-Mich., formally proposed the alteration of the pledge in a bill he introduced to Congress.

The "under God" movement didn't take off, however, until the next year, when it was endorsed by the Rev. George M. Docherty, the pastor of the Presbyterian church in Washington that Eisenhower attended. In February 1954, Docherty gave a sermon—with the president in the pew before him—arguing that apart from "the United States of America," the pledge "could be the pledge of any country." He added, "I could hear little Moscovites [sic] repeat a similar pledge to their hammer-and-sickle flag with equal solemnity." Perhaps forgetting that "liberty and justice for all" was not the norm in Moscow, Docherty urged the inclusion of "under God" in the pledge to denote what he felt was special about the United States.

The ensuing congressional speechifying—debate would be a misnomer, given the near-unanimity of opinion—offered more proof that the point of the bill was to promote religion. The legislative history of the 1954 act stated that the hope was to "acknowledge the dependence of our people and our Government upon … the Creator … [and] deny the atheistic and materialistic concept of communism." In signing the bill on June 14, 1954, Flag Day, Eisenhower delighted in the fact that from then on, "millions of our schoolchildren will daily proclaim in every city and town … the dedication of our nation and our people to the Almighty." That the nation, constitutionally speaking, was in fact dedicated to the opposite proposition seemed to escape the president.

Let me be blunt: the pledge of allegiance means very little to me, with or without the inclusion of "under God." Of course, I could recite it in my sleep, but that has more to do with some sort of Pavlovian response to the words "I pledge allegiance...", then it does to a desire on my part to know what it is I'm saying. That's what happens when you start reciting the pledge on a daily basis in the first grade--you know the words but not the meaning, and if that's the case, what's the point? (by the way, I was probably 10 before I realized that indivisible was not invisible).

If the pledge is an expression of patriotism, I'm not sure how it's not still patriotic if the words "under God" are excluded, especially since that particular clause was added to the original pledge for explicitly religious purposes. But, then again, if being patriotic depends on your willingness to recite a silly pledge written for a popular magazine in 1892 (by a socialist, no less!), then we're more screwed than I thought.

article here.

A funny post on the Liberal Media Myth

2005-09-15T22:03:00.000-04:00

Go read it. And don't forget the comments section.

Condi Rice does another 180, this time on Poll Numbers

2005-09-15T21:00:00.000-04:00

Last night on O’Reilly, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice claimed she couldn’t assess Bush’s current poll numbers:

O’REILLY: How do you assess President Bush’s falling poll numbers? He’s at the lowest level of his presidency now. Why do you think that’s happening?RICE: Well, Bill, I’m not one who can assess poll numbers in American politics.

But when Bush’s poll numbers weren’t at the lowest levels of his presidency, she had no trouble telling O’Reilly what those high poll numbers meant:

RICE: Look, the president — first of all, I think one has to look at polls. And he was at astronomically high levels. But see, when you go out there and you talk to Americans, they trust this president. They know that this president is doing everything that he can on the war on terror.

article here.

Command and Control

2005-09-15T20:55:00.000-04:00

The Whiskey Bar (Billmon) is almost required daily reading. Highlights from this post:

Ever since the New Deal, successive GOP administrations have regarded the federal government as hostile territory to be occupied and, if possible, pacified. Under Nixon and, to a lesser degree, Reagan, cabinet secretaries were seen as unreliable, and prone to "go native" -- especially since many of them were ideological moderates, who were appointed to mollify powerful interest groups with a vested interest in the status quo.

For conservatives, this made the White House the political equivalent of the Green Zone -- a fortified command and control center beyond the reach of the insurgent bureaucrats. And out in the agencies, hard-edged conservative subcabinet appointees began to take on something of the role of political commissars in the Soviet military, monitoring both their nominal superiors and their career subordinates for signs of disloyalty.

article here.

GOP corruption at State Level -- Massachusetts

2005-09-15T20:45:00.000-04:00

I swear, I'm going to wear this keyboard out on these stories:

BOSTON —The vice chairman of the state Republican Party was charged Tuesday with money-laundering after he allegedly offered to “cleanse” drug proceeds for a legal client.

Lawrence Novak, 54, an attorney from Brockton, was arrested at his home Tuesday after investigators said he allegedly offered to launder drug profits for Scott Holyoke, who is awaiting trial on federal drug trafficking charges and agreed to be a cooperating witness against Novak for the FBI.

Novak was taken into custody after he allegedly deposited money in a Brockton bank, federal authorities said.

"Has the place blown up?"

2005-09-15T20:27:00.000-04:00

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - John Bolton's reputation as a difficult diplomat gave his boss, U.S. President George W. Bush, an opportunity to tease the new American ambassador to the United Nations.

"How's he doing? Has the place blown up?" Bush asked U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan as the president and Bolton arrived at U.N. headquarters on Tuesday for a world summit.

The president's jest was captured on videotape by a U.N. television crew.

Rove to Cheney: "We've got to stop letting him near open mics!"

Cashing in on Disaster

2005-09-15T20:16:00.000-04:00

What better time to push the neo-conservative agenda than after a natural disaster? What a great time to help poor people by lowering taxes on the rich? What a great time to help workers by eliminating worker safety rules and fair wage laws? What a great time to help those who lost everything by pushing school vouchers? What a great time to revert back to the beginning of the 20th century when businessmen, ruled the country on the back of the workers they exploited?

So sayeth the Heritage Foundation.

Compassionate Conservatism -- post # 1592

2005-09-15T08:47:00.000-04:00

President Bush’s vow to speed welfare assistance to the victims of Hurricane Katrina overlooks the gruesome determination of many Republican Congressional leaders to make $13 billion in cuts for Medicaid and food stamps. They quietly plan this even as they throw short-term emergency money at the crisis.

Sustaining their health and income is vital to the storm’s impoverished survivors now and well into the future. But the most basic cuts in antipoverty programs are planned for enactment later this month by the same Republican majorities that approved the president’s upper-bracket tax cuts and created deficits for a generation to come.

Congress’s budget hawks are clearly hoping that the cacophony of sympathetic speechifying about the storm victims will distract the public from these cuts and from the fact that they will land heavily on the three states most devastated by the hurricane, where roughly one out of three children were already dependent on Medicaid.

article here.

Judge rules Pledge Illegal -- Wing-nuts respond

2005-09-15T08:02:00.000-04:00

I knew I'd find some good responses to this ruling calling the Pledge of Alligiance illegal. It took me about five seconds. Just one glance at one of our favorite conservative blogs brought these. More to come as the day progresses (I promise!):

I can not believe even our Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional to these traitors. What do liberals care about the Constitution? They think combining 10 amendments, switching half the words, asking the French to rewrite it, and then burning it eventually shows how murdering children is a Constitutional right.... yet things like the 2nd amendment and electoral college are bogus. I think I get where they are coming from.
I personally have seen a lot of ballot initiatives looking to burn the Consitution after letting the French re-write it. Haven't you?

This next comment is a prime example of what bloggers call a TROLL. In his post the Troll is responding, line by line, to an earlier post:

I agree with this.

Were you looking for someone to pat you on the back? Do you think anyone cares with what you agree? I think you might be having a little issue there with overestimating your own importance.
You disagree with me and therefore you're opinion as an American Citizen does not matter.

Just revert the pledge as it was originally written. What's the problem?

It is really quite simple. So simple that even someone of your obvious limited abilities should be able to see. The pledge was modified to its current version - WITH the Under God phrase - by the US Congress in 1954.

As Rush Limbaugh would say, for those of you in Loma Linda, that means it was done by representatives of the people - put there specifically to act in their interest. That means that our elected representatives did what they felt was what the people of this great country wanted them to do. Again, for you social engineers, that is called democracy.
It's also illegal. Just because the majority wants it, doesn't make it legal. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion...

The problem is that what this judge is attempting to do is overthrow the will of the people via judicial fiat. He is not elected, and therefore represents no one. If the people want to change the pledge, then put it on the ballot and lets get their decision. I said the justice is attempting, because this decision will not stand. It will be tossed out.
Congress should in fact be able to pass any law they wish, with no oversight whatsoever. Especially now, since my party is in power. The Judicial Branch only exists because the Founding Fathers were drunk.

Why must people feel the need to inject their religion onto other people?

A better question is why do people like you think that your misconstruing of the pledge as "trying to inject" any religion is anything more than a sweeping lie? Exactly WHAT religion is being injected? Come on, don't be shy.
In this case, all of them.

I believe in God. And I am very comfortable with my relationship with him (although It's a daily struggle).

Again, who cares what you believe?
People less bitter and self-involved than this particular hate-filled troll.

But this is between me and God. Not between me, the government and God.

I find it bordering on hilarious that you, someone who professes to believe in God, is opposed to a simple phrase in the Pledge, while I, an atheist who believes in no deity or region, see nothing wrong with it at all.
We should all think the exact same thing in this country. Meaning you should think what I tell you to think.

I want the government to stay out of my religion, regardless of how popular it may or may not be.

The government is not in your religion. You are acting and thinking like a paranoid schizophrenic. You want the Pledge changed? Get Congress to change it. Otherwise, STFU.
Yes, STFU. Who do you think you are? An American? No Liberals in America matter. Don't you know that after five years?

One more quick thought: Since the judge answers to no one - not even you - what do you think he cares about what you think either?
This particular troll obviously cares what he thinks or he wouldn't have spent so much time denouncing him. Not his policies or his beliefs, mind you, but the poster himself.

more to come...

2005-09-15T07:55:00.000-04:00

54 US Senators today KILLED legislation establishing an independent, bipartisan commission to investigate what went so horribly wrong with Hurricane Katrina.

76% of Americans want an independent bipartisan commission, like the one that investigated the 9/11 attacks, to investigate what went wrong. In fact, according to the same poll, Americans of all stripes, Republicans and Democrats, are united behind their support for such a commission (64% of all Republicans and 83% of all Democrats want a commission) even though they were aware that the Republicans in Congress are doing their own biased and partisan investigation (see below).

So why did every Republican US Senator (save the Senator from Louisiana, who simply didn't vote) vote AGAINST forming this independent, bipartisan commission to investigate what went so horribly wrong, and to find out how we avoid an even larger catastrophe the next time Osama attacks a major American city with a chemical, biological or nuclear bomb?

more here.

I appreciate John's fervor on the subject, but... we know why the Republicans voted against an independent commission. It's not about open government or the american people. It's about Power; obtaining it, keeping it, and taking it from the other guy.

Yes -- Tom Delay said this with a straight face.

2005-09-15T07:37:00.000-04:00

From Think Progress:

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay yesterday declared an “ongoing victory” in his effort to cut spending, and said “there is simply no fat left to cut in the federal budget.” Here’s a list of vital programs Tom DeLay has marshaled through Congress:

$25,000 to study mariachi music in Nevada

$1.5 million for an Alaskan bus stop with heated sidewalks and electronic signs

$75,000 set aside for the Paper Industry International Hall of Fame in Appleton, Wisconsin

$100,000 for a film festival in Rochester, New York.

$50 million for an indoor rainforest in Iowa.

$18,000 for a smoking booth at a private New Jersey airport.

$200,000 for a peanut festival in Alabama

$200 million to build a bridge from Ketchikan, Alaska to a nearby island with 50 inhabitants.

$1 million for the B.B. King Museum in Indianola

$300,000 to construct the Great Falls Parking Garage in Auburn, Maine

$ 240,000 for potato storage research in Madison, Wisconsin

Granted, a Congressman's job is to look out for his state first. But Delay was speaking for the Federal Government as a whole, and the mere fact that he can publicly announce something to blatantly false (and stupid) is simply absurd. But when there's no checks and balances in a Government dominated by one party, why not say it?

The Congressional Republicans and the Bush Administration are like smash-and-grabbers who run into a store, take everything they can hold and run out before the police come or the manager shoots them. And we are all left to foot the bill through higher prices.

The Bag of Dirty Tricks expands

2005-09-15T07:31:00.000-04:00

MANCHESTER, N.H.—The New Hampshire Democratic Party added more defendants Wednesday to a lawsuit over the jamming of its phone lines on Election Day 2002.

Repeated hang-up calls overwhelmed the party’s get-out-the-vote phone banks and a ride-to-the-polls line for more than an hour that day. Former state GOP director Chuck McGee and

Republican consultant Allen Raymond pleaded guilty to taking part in the scheme and James Tobin, a former regional director for the Republican National Committee from Bangor, Maine, is scheduled for trial in December.

As those criminal cases proceeded in federal court, Democrats sued the state Republican Party, McGee and Raymond in Hillsborough County Superior Court seeking more information about the plan and reimbursement for its costs of setting up the phone banks.

On Wednesday, they expanded the civil lawsuit to include Tobin, former state GOP chairman John Dowd, the Republican National Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

hat tip Susie.

Sure, a few GOP martyrs may have to go to prison as part of the Systematic Campaign on local and state levels by the GOP to win the 2004 election. It's a small price to pay for four more years of the Bush Administration, and they no doubt happily martyr themselves upon the alter. They've served their purpose, and much like in the animal world, their time is over.

Daily Kos on Fiscal Conservatives and Katrina

2005-09-13T21:54:00.000-04:00

Please help the real victims of Hurricane Katrina...

Those poor "fiscal conservative" Republicans. They Approved $54.4 billion for the Iraq War (enacted in April 2003)...plus $70.6 billion (enacted November 2003)...plus $21.5 billion (passed as part of regular appropriations for the Department of Defense for fiscal year 2005)...plus $58 billion (enacted April 2005). Our war of choice is costing us $5.6 billion per month and that's just peachy.

They rammed a $530 billion Medicare bill through Congress in the middle of the night and that felt soooo goooood. (the original price tag, you might remember, was $400 billion. But what's $130 billion among friends?)

This was nice: a $14.5 billion energy bill that, according to the president, doesn't do a damn thing to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, but does give financial hoochie-koochies to the oil companies which they can stack on top of their record-breaking profits. Suh-weeet!
How about $2.2 trillion with a T in tax cuts for the rich---during wartime even! Or a pork-laden, $286 billion transportation bill. That's orgasmo-tastic!

And while we're at it, let's not forget Social Security privatization, which would toss at least another $1 trillion onto the pile.

But...funding for relief efforts to help victims of the worst natural disaster in our nation's 229-year history? Well...that's cause for grave concern by Republican "fiscal conservatives":

"We have to be there for the families and the communities, but we also have an obligation to the rest of the American people and to future generations," says Rep. Mike Pence (R-Indiana). "We're going to have to put a real sharp pencil to the budget, sharper than we have ever had to do before," says Rep. Ray LaHood (R-Illinois). "When figures start flowing up to $200 billion, I have concerns. $1 billion is a lot of money," says Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama).

Clearly, "fiscal conservative" Republicans need our support more than ever in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. They're suffering and no one seems to feel their pain. Please show you care and donate as much as you can by placing (non tax-deductible) donations into the ExxonMobil baseball cap in the lobby. God Bless You...and God Bless the Fiscally Conservative United States of America!

Article here.

SCOTUS Hypocrisy

2005-09-13T20:10:00.000-04:00

IOKIYAR: It's OK If You're A Republican:

Orrin Hatch flip-flops on questioning Roberts

Live Blogging from Supreme Court Watch:

"A second Repubican senator, Orrin Hatch of Utah (defying conventional political tie conventional wisdom in a very nice gold striped number), seems to be trying to lay the groundwork that it’s okay for Judge Roberts not to answer questions he find uncomfortable. Hatch tried to bring up a Harding nomination from years ago, citing a same-day nomination and confirmation as some kind of gold standard."

Senator Hatch himself in 1997 said:

"The Senate can and should do what it can to ascertain the jurisprudential views a nominee will bring to the bench in order to prevent the confirmation of those who are likely to be judicial activists. Determining which will become activists is not easy since many of President Clinton's nominees tend to have limited paper trails... Determining which of President Clinton's nominees will become activists is complicated and it will require the Senate to be more diligent and extensive in its questioning of nominees' jurisprudential views." (Address of Senator Hatch before University of Utah Federalist Society chapter, February 18, 1997)"

IOKIYAR

Foxes in the Henhouse

2005-09-13T20:05:00.000-04:00

Driftglass:

Before the body count is even reasonably guesstimated, or New Orleans pumped even half dry, the awarding contracts on the backs of the dead, dying and displaced to the same fucking group of Bush/Cheney Usual Crony Suspects has begun in earnest and in broad daylight.

Remember that these are the same bloody-handed banshees who have been keening about what a horrible heap of unseemly horribleness it is to point fingers. How awful it is to, y’know, hold people to account for the massive failures before, during and after Katrina...since about eleven seconds after it became abundantly clear that the lion’s share of this shitburger is going to land on a certain Big Boy Desk in the Oval Office.

So less than 300 hours after the levees broke it is somehow too disrespectfully soon to ask why the President of the United States failed his country so stupidly and utterly, but hardly soon enough to begin shoveling out lucrative contracts to Dick “House of Pain” Cheney’s former company and current nest egg -– the Thieves of Baghdad -- and to butt-nuzzling pals of Joe Allbaugh; Bush family fixer and apparently the oleaginous genius behind stocking the management of FEMA to the rafters with the likes of Mr. Ed’s Attorney-of-Record.

Yes, of course the government must retain the service of whole host of companies to help fix the city and the lives they helped destroy: that’s a given. But this, especially that last one –- pumping your tax dollars for cleanup and recovery out of the Treasury and directly into the change purse of one of the men who appears to bear no small measure of responsibility for this fuckup -- this goes so far beyond the typical Bush tone-deafness, stupidity and emotionally autistic detachment that simple fucktardery can't explain it.

This is a Bob Beaman broad jump straight into the heart of “We Really Just Don’t Fucking Care” terrority.

This is what happens when your criminality-and-denial reflexes have become so routinized, so completely automatic, that you literally can't smell your own moral stink anymore. And then a hurricane rips your roof off an all of the maggoty habits you have built up in private are suddenly dumped out into the glaring light. Your poll numbers drop like lemmings packing anvils. Your own Media Tribbles suddenly stop cooing and chirping, race right up your pants-leg and sink their tiny teeth into your sack. And yet you still can't dope out exactly why an overwhelming majoriy of the public is so pissed at you, so you keep right own showing your sticky ass on prime time teevee.

This has the reek of burglars making one, last slow pass to make sure they've picked the joint clean down to the nailheads before the cops show up. Of Visigoths, having completely sacked Rome, going back and razoring the change out of the pockets of the corpses they left behind just to make damned sure they took everything.

And it also just goes to show that as callous and lazy as the Bush White House is when it comes to the plight of the “least of these”, that is exactly how ruthless and efficient they are at hacking up and rendering down the disasters they visit on others into tidy little parcels of profit for for their loyal family retainers.

As was said of Chicago hog-butchers a century ago, if nothing else, when it comes to exploiting the misery and tragedy of others, the Bush Crime Family knows how to “use everything but the squeal.”

Article here.

The Bush Administration's 3 - Point Plan

2005-09-13T19:54:00.000-04:00

1) Save our Political Asses

2) Send as many no-bid contracts for Post-Katrina rebuilding to our Corporate Friends

3) Blame everything on as many Democrats as we can find

Billmon has more.

Red-State Priorities

2005-09-13T19:27:00.000-04:00

Yes, let's destroy the Federal Government so that we may give State Governments more power, because the state you're born in should dictate what rights you have. See for example Jane's take on the Governor of Texas. Yes, Texas:

As Governor Rick Perry two-steps around the State of Texas showing residents how much Republicans care about victims of Hurricane Katrina, he has been urging Texans to contribute through three groups: The Red Cross, Salvation Army and the OneStar Foundation.

The third group happens to be an organization that supports "faith-based initiatives" and was founded by Perry himself, who earlier this year in a Forth Worth Church was pleased as punch to sign a law making it a crime punishable by death (yes, death, capital punishment, death, say it again death) for a doctor to perform an abortion on a teenage girl without the consent of her parents, or in any way not conform to the letter of the extremely restrictive State of Texas abortion laws.

The same Rick Perry who said gay soldiers who served in Iraq should come back to some place other than Texas.The same Rick Perry who has spoken repeatedly at private events in Texas where a minister reasoned that God sent Hurricane Katrina to purify the nation of gays.According to the Dallas Morning News:

Mr. Perry created OneStar as a nonprofit charitable organization in January 2004 to coordinate faith-based initiatives and promote volunteerism. Its chief executive is Susan Weddington, who left the state Republican Party chairmanship to run the organization.

"Coordinate faith-based initiatives." Well that's a pretty partisan objective wouldn't you say? Should probably be subject to separation of church and state and all. Right?Wrong. We're talking about Texas:

Through legislation, the governor placed his divisions of faith-based initiatives, adult mentoring and the AmeriCorps volunteer program in the OneStar Foundation. It operates with federal grant money.

One-Star's web site says that the foundation was "birthed from the heart and vision of Governor Rick Perry."

Well nobody ought to work themselves into a froth contesting that one.

So as you watch the dead bodies being fished out of the drink in New Orleans, know that there are people already out there willing to manipulate your compassion (and your pocketbook) to finance the Christian invasion of your bedroom and your doctor's office.

The Republic of Gilead is most certainly at hand.

...but it's Howard Stern that should be censored...

2005-09-13T06:36:00.000-04:00

Nationally syndicated Clear Channel radio host Glenn Beck referred to survivors of Hurricane Katrina who remained in New Orleans as "scumbags." Also, after acknowledging that nobody "in their right mind is going to say this out loud," Beck attacked victims of the disaster in general and the families of victims of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, saying: "I didn't think I could hate victims faster than the 9-11 victims."

From the September 9 broadcast of The Glenn Beck Program:

BECK: Let me be real honest with you. I don't think anybody on talk radio -- I don't think anybody in their right mind is going to say this out loud -- but I wonder if I'm the only one that feels this way. Yesterday, when I saw the ATM cards being handed out, the $2,000 ATM cards, and they were being handed out at the Astrodome. And they actually had to close the Astrodome and seal it off for a while because there was a near-riot trying to get to these ATM cards. My first thought was, it's not like they're going to run out of the $2,000 ATM cards. You can wait! You know, stand in line. Maybe it's because I'm the kind of guy, when I go to a buffet, I either have to be first in line, or I'm the very last. Because I know there's going to be extra food, and I just won't stand in the line. I'll wait until all the suckers go get their food, and then I'll go get mine. Or if I'm really hungry, I hate to admit this -- and really, I don't even have to be really hungry. If I'm really being a pig, I will kind of, like, hang out around the buffet table before the line is -- you know, chat with people right around the table: "Oh, they just opened the line! Let's go!" And then you're first in line.

When you are rioting for these tickets, or these ATM cards, the second thing that came to mind was -- and this is horrible to say, and I wonder if I'm alone in this -- you know it took me about a year to start hating the 9-11 victims' families? Took me about a year. And I had such compassion for them, and I really wanted to help them, and I was behind, you know, "Let's give them money, let's get this started." All of this stuff. And I really didn't -- of the 3,000 victims' families, I don't hate all of them. Probably about 10 of them. And when I see a 9-11 victim family on television, or whatever, I'm just like, "Oh shut up!" I'm so sick of them because they're always complaining. And we did our best for them. And, again, it's only about 10.

But the second thought I had when I saw these people and they had to shut down the Astrodome and lock it down, I thought: I didn't think I could hate victims faster than the 9-11 victims. These guys -- you know it's really sad. We're not hearing anything about Mississippi. We're not hearing anything about Alabama. We're hearing about the victims in New Orleans. This is a 90,000-square-mile disaster site, New Orleans is 181 square miles. A hundred and -- 0.2 percent of the disaster area is New Orleans! And that's all we're hearing about, are the people in New Orleans. Those are the only ones we're seeing on television are the scumbags -- and again, it's not all the people in New Orleans. Most of the people in New Orleans got out! It's just a small percentage of those who were left in New Orleans, or who decided to stay in New Orleans, and they're getting all the attention. It's exactly like the 9-11 victims' families. There's about 10 of them that are spoiling it for everybody.

Beck's program is syndicated by Premiere Radio Networks (owned by radio conglomerate Clear Channel Communications) on more than 160 radio stations across the country to an estimated weekly audience of 3 million listeners.

article here.

Faith-Based Payback

2005-09-13T06:24:00.000-04:00

Proving there's not any area of government from which one cannot receive some sort of political payback:

Sep. 9, 2005 - Charity and religious leaders are questioning why the Federal Emergency Management Agency designated Operation Blessing as the No. 2 charity for donations in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Operation Blessing is the charity founded and still chaired by Pat Robertson, the politically well-connected television evangelist, who recently called for the assassination of Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela. "Ladies and gentlemen, we've never had anything like this," Robertson told his audience. "Let's rally together and do what we can."

In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the federal government, through FEMA, issued a list of charities to which Americans should donate. On that list, Operation Blessing was only second to the American Red Cross. Charity leaders say this FEMA recommendation is a huge boost for Robertson's charity. "It could be worth tens of millions of dollars," said Richard Walden, president and founder of Operation USA, a non-governmental organization specializing in disaster relief.

However, as Robertson hosted his daily television show in Mississippi this week, other charity leaders were questioning why FEMA had recommended Robertson's operation and left others off the list, including Walden's Operation USA. "I was shocked," said Walden upon seeing Robertson's charity so prominently displayed on the FEMA Web site. "It stuck out for a reason because of Pat Robertson's activities over the years."

Questions of Accountability

Seven years ago, those activities led Virginia investigators to say there was evidence to prove Robertson "willfully induced contributions from the public through the use of misleading statements." Robertson denied the allegations. He then personally reimbursed Operation Blessing. No action was taken.

"Based on their track record, I would say that, as an individual, I would not give to Operational Blessing," admitted the Rev. Charles Henderson, a Presbyterian minister, who is the executive director of the Association for Religion and Intellectual Life.

According to its most recent filing with the Internal Revenue Service, Operation Blessing gave more than half of its yearly allocation of cash donations -- $885,000 -- to the Christian Broadcasting Network, or CBN, of which Robertson is also the chairman.

"There is no accountability when you have two boards working hand in hand like this," said Henderson. "One never knows when you're contributing to Operation Blessing whether the money is really going to the hurricane victims, or whether it's going to pay for some more television time for Pat Robertson's television show."

Some charity watchdog groups have given high marks to Operation Blessing. Bill Horan, the charity's president, at first denied his charity gave any money to Robertson's television operation.

"Well, that's an absolute, total and complete distortion of the truth," Horan said. "Operation Blessing does not give 1 red cent to CBN." When he was told of the Operation Blessing documents obtained by ABC News, which show a contribution of $885,000 to CBN, Horan called it an accounting issue.

"I'm president of a charity that's been working 22 to 24 hours a day for the last week trying to save lives down there," he said, "and I'm not going to talk any more about the issues that involve accounting."

A spokesman for Operation Blessing later told ABC News that the charity utilizes Robertson's television network as a conduit for delivering donations overseas, and that none of the money has been used for network activities.

As for FEMA, Director Michael Brown says that he does not know who decided to recommend Robertson's charity so prominently.

article here.

the best Free Press that money can buy

2005-09-13T06:06:00.000-04:00

It's not the crime (or embarassing porno tape and derogatory relationships with women), it's the cover-up.

"We were protecting him"

hat tip: Huffington Post

Winning means never having to admit you're wrong

2005-09-13T06:01:00.000-04:00

From Media Matters:

On the September 11 edition of NBC's syndicated The Chris Matthews Show, New York Times columnist David Brooks revealed that he has learned from private conversations with Bush officials who "represent" what "Bush believes" that from its earliest days, the Bush administration adopted a policy of shielding itself from political damage by never publicly admitting any mistake -- even if it meant lying to the media and the American public. The fact that Bush doesn't admit mistakes has been reported by the media for years. For instance, in the September 11 edition of The New York Times, David Sanger reported, "Mr. Bush, his aides acknowledge, is loath to fire members of his administration or to take public actions that are tantamount to an admission of a major mistake." Brooks himself has previously noted the Bush administration's unwillingness to admit to mistakes. But what Brooks's September 11 account adds is that Bush is being intentionally dishonest -- in Brooks's words, "totally tactical and totally insincere" -- in resisting such public admissions and in blaming others when failures are too obvious to deny.

Moreover, on the Matthews Show, Brooks disclosed that "from Day One," the Bush White House "decided our public relations is not going to be honest," and that "privately they admit mistakes all the time." Brooks's revelation would appear to be of major significance, particularly in light of recent attempts by Bush administration officials to shift culpability in the Hurricane Katrina disaster away from the White House. But while he claimed on the Matthews show to have debated this strategy with administration officials "since Day One" -- indicating that he has known about it from the beginning -- a review of his columns and television appearances since Katrina struck reveals that Brooks has refrained from telling viewers and readers that the administration's campaign to rehabilitate its public image over the poor handling of the Katrina crisis by blaming others was apparently another manifestation of this dishonest strategy.

read on

Are you kidding me?

2005-09-13T05:51:00.000-04:00

Bush Not Aware That His Own FEMA Director No Longer Works For Him

“Maybe you know something I don’t know.”

That was President Bush’s reponse to a reporter who asked whether he had heard that his own FEMA director, Michael Brown, resigned today from the administration.

then check out this post in the comments:

And yet, CNN reports, quoting Brown:

“As I told the president, it is important that I leave now to avoid further distraction from the ongoing mission of FEMA.”

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/12/katrina.impact/index.html

Who's running this government?

Fool Me Once...

2005-09-12T20:35:00.000-04:00

Bush's critics aren't backing off, because they've been here before. Former Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle, who cooperated with Bush in the days after Sept. 11 but lost his South Dakota seat after a long, White House-inspired campaign accusing him of being "obstructionist," speaks from experience. "Democrats to this day remain outraged at the blatant efforts that Republicans, especially in the administration, made to undermine the perception of our patriotism and our motivations," Daschle said in an interview.

This time around, Democrats won't be waved off by right-wing commentators or by contrived and insincere appeals to national unity. "I don't think we should pay a whit of attention to administration criticisms," Daschle said. "Democrats need to ask the hard questions and ignore the political attacks that are destined to come when we ask them."

Article here. Hat tip Daily Kos.

Really... who would have thought that kicking a Donkey in the nuts for five years would make it angry?

My Values are Your Values (or else)

2005-09-12T20:18:00.000-04:00

So there's this parent who disagrees with the (admittedly controversial) subject being taught in his kid's school. He meets with school officials, refuses to leave, gets arrested, and tries to make himself into a martyr. Furthermore, he attempts to dictate more or less the entire school cirriculum, and make decisions about other parents' children for them. Needless to say, Jesse at Pandagon is all over this:

Remember David Parker? Sure you do...he was the "concerned parent" who demanded that his child's school reshape the entire school day so that he never be exposed to the idea that people of the same sex can ever touch outside of sports?

Well, the Concerned Women for America have taken up the non-oppressed, kinda-lame white Nelson Mandela's cause, with spectacular results.

The rally on Tuesday, held on the site of the opening battle of the Revolutionary War more than 200 years ago, featured Mr. Parker as a speaker. The participants faced a large counter protest. The counter protestors, who included members of the local school board, carried signs bearing the misleading slogan, “Massachusetts welcomes every child.” (Except, of course, Mr. Parker’s child.)

Hold on...wasn't Mr. Parker the one asking that his child be taken out of class every time the gayitude comes up?

“The media has tried to turn the focus from this as a parental rights issue into an anti-gay issue,” says Tammy Mosher, CWA state director for Massachusetts. Her organization worked to get the word out about Mr. Parker’s situation and the Tuesday night rally.

Police were present at the rally to prevent violence. Afterwards, they kept Mr. Parker from giving interviews to local media who were covering the story. Parker told the Article 8 Alliance, "The police felt that once the cameras were on it would get 'totally out of control' and could become 'incendiary' and they weren't willing to take that chance and be accountable for this."

Howsabout you give out contact information to let the media get in touch with you at your home? You do realize that we live in an era of mass communications, right? Anyway, he looked like enough of a dumbass without the interviews.

The Lexington Public School Superintendent has secured a restraining order to keep Mr. Parker off all school property. This means that among other things, he may not pick up or drop off his son at school, attend school sporting events or the school board meeting, and since in Lexington voting is conducted at public schools, he is unable to exercise that right.

From, you know, an actual news source (the above-linked article):

Parker said the restraining order, put in place after his arrest forbidding him from entering any public school property in Lexington without advanced permission, still stands and is working to be "hurtful to my family and make us feel unwelcome."

You see, if Parker gets permission to come on school property, which he'll most likely get for non-school purposes such as voting, he can bring his happy homo-hatin' ass wherever he needs to go.

Mr. Parker’s trial is set to begin September 21. Mrs. Mosher plans to be in the court room that day. She and a member of her CWA of Massachusetts Steering Committee attended the pre-trial hearing as well.

Mr. Parker addressed Mrs. Mosher’s CWA prayer/action chapter last month. She was impressed with the polite and articulate way in which he presented his message. “He just wanted to do what was right in his eyes for his son’s education,” she said. Mr. Parker stayed for an extra hour after the meeting answering questions.

Unfortunately, what was right in his eyes was crazy in the eyes of sane people.

Parker also appeared on Mrs. Mosher and her husband Timothy’s talk show Family Time, which airs on a cable access channel that reaches much of western Massachusetts.

Reflecting on Mr. Parker’s situation, Mrs. Mosher said, “This is a good way to drive home the point that parents should be involved in their children’s education. Don’t relinquish control! Read your children’s textbooks; listen carefully to what they tell you about their classes. As things are right now, the schools are wielding way too much power.”

What's strange is that the problem in this situation is that Parker wants the schools to wield power they simply don't have. Here were his demands:

The Parkers' proposal was simple: notify them in advance if there is a planned discussion about same-sex issues, and, if an adult becomes involved in a discussion spontaneously begun by a child, then remove their child from the discussion. Their concern is that impressionable children will hear for the first time from a respected adult that a homosexual headed family is a normal family structure, and an equally "good" one at that. Regardless of whether one agrees with that premise, it is a matter of one's values and beliefs. It is not borne in hate, but in a concern for his children and a desire to see them equipped to make decisions in a healthy manner.

So, if anyone ever brings up homosexuality, their child must force class to be interrupted to be escorted from the room until the question is answered, at which point he will be allowed back in. I don't know of a single school, a single teacher who could realistically handle that, along with the attendant responsibility entailed. Imagine you have a classroom of fifteen kids, and three can't hear about homosexuality and four more can't hear about evolution. Now, imagine you're a science teacher.

"Timmy, you take Sherri and Joseph in the hall, and let Neil, Sara, Jenny and Heather back in. Oh, wait, was your question about how gays and lesbians evolved? Damn. Okay, all of you in the hall, and I'll call up another teacher to watch over you."

His "concern" for his kids demands that the entire school day be shaped solely around special treatment for his child. He embodies the conservative view of diversity perfectly: protecting my child from your diversity is just as imporant as actually promoting it...perhaps more so!

A WaPo Analysis

2005-09-12T20:07:00.000-04:00

The Washington Post has an interesting round-up of... well... the current political spectrum of the Bush Administration, it's relation to the MSM, and it's current state of being based on recent (and not so recent) events. Includes links to several current prominent and relavent articles.

Intro:

Amid a slew of stories this weekend about the embattled presidency and the blundering government response to the drowning of New Orleans, some journalists who are long-time observers of the White House are suddenly sharing scathing observations about President Bush that may be new to many of their readers.

Is Bush the commanding, decisive, jovial president you've been hearing about for years in so much of the mainstream press?

Maybe not so much.

Judging from the blistering analyses in Time, Newsweek, and elsewhere these past few days, it turns out that Bush is in fact fidgety, cold and snappish in private. He yells at those who dare give him bad news and is therefore not surprisingly surrounded by an echo chamber of terrified sycophants. He is slow to comprehend concepts that don't emerge from his gut. He is uncomprehending of the speeches that he is given to read. And oh yes, one of his most significant legacies -- the immense post-Sept. 11 reorganization of the federal government which created the Homeland Security Department -- has failed a big test.

Maybe it's Bush's sinking poll numbers -- he is, after all, undeniably an unpopular president now. Maybe it's the way that the federal response to the flood has cut so deeply against Bush's most compelling claim to greatness: His resoluteness when it comes to protecting Americans.

But for whatever reason, critical observations and insights that for so long have been zealously guarded by mainstream journalists, and only doled out in teaspoons if at all, now seem to be flooding into the public sphere.

An emperor-has-no-clothes moment seems upon us.

Read All About It

What Plame investigation?

2005-09-12T20:00:00.000-04:00

Rove/Plame: Fitzgerald to lose his day job?

The Chicago Tribune reports today former Illinois Senator Peter Fitzgerald, who championed the appointment of Patrick Fitzgerald (no relation) to the US attorney's post in Chicago in 2001, is worried about "mounting political pressure" against his protege's reappointment to the post this fall. The former senator speaks of foes in Illinois who'd like to stop the US attorney's corruption probes; he does not mention the US attorney's moonlighting gig as special prosecutor in the Plame investigation. He's a Republican, after all. But the point is clear enough....

Fitzgerald is onto something or there wouldn't be this pressure.

Valerie Plame? CIA agent outed by Karl Rove for political payback? Never heard of her. An investigation by Fitzgerald? Never happened. Quick! Look over there! It's a terrorist!

The Bush Corporate Agenda: quick to act, when there's a profit to be made

2005-09-12T19:41:00.000-04:00

Thousands stranded and dying in a city that's under water? Let's put a horse-breeder in charge and think nothing more of it. But when it comes to making sure our corporate pals are taken care of, we're on it. Let's just hope no one notices:

A powerful investigative agency of the US Congress is to investigate the award of contracts by the Bush administration for emergency and reconstruction work in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

The Government Accounting Office, which monitors public spending, is to audit the contracts won by the US firms. Already contracts have been given for repairing New Orleans' flood levees, rebuilding naval facilities, providing temporary housing and removing debris.

Companies winning work include US contracting giants Bechtel and Halliburton. Halliburton, formerly headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, is facing questions for allegedly overcharging on work done in Iraq. The Department of Defense was criticised for awarding Iraq reconstruction contracts to these two companies without competition. Other groups include Fluor and Shaw Group, a Louisiana engineer. The move comes as leading congressional figures express concern over the contracting process.

California representative Henry Waxman, who led much of the investigation into the Iraq reconstruction contracts, says: 'The administration has an abysmal contracting record in Iraq. We can't afford to make the same mistakes again. We must make sure taxpayer funds are not wasted, because every dollar thrown away today is a dollar that is not available to hurricane victims and their families.' Contracts had to be awarded in 'full transparency'. He added the audit of the contracting was 'a very good first step'.

Bechtel has been asked by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to assess the need for, and then to provide, temporary 'trailer' housing in the hardest hit areas.

Halliburton is repairing damage to three naval bases under a logistical contract with the US navy.

Also see here and here.

25 Mind-Numbingly Stupid Quotes About Hurricane Katrina And Its Aftermath

2005-09-12T19:34:00.000-04:00

Heh:

1) "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees." â€“President Bush, on "Good Morning America," Sept. 1, 2005, six days after repeated warnings from experts about the scope of damage expected from Hurricane Katrina (Source)

2) "What I'm hearing which is sort of scary is that they all want to stay in Texas. Everybody is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway so this (chuckle) â€“ this is working very well for them." â€“Former First Lady Barbara Bush, on the Hurricane flood evacuees in the Houston Astrodome, Sept. 5, 2005 (Source)

3) "It makes no sense to spend billions of dollars to rebuild a city that's seven feet under sea level....It looks like a lot of that place could be bulldozed." â€“House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), Aug. 31, 2005 (Source)

4) "We've got a lot of rebuilding to do ... The good news is â€” and it's hard for some to see it now â€” that out of this chaos is going to come a fantastic Gulf Coast, like it was before. Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott's house â€” he's lost his entire house â€” there's going to be a fantastic house. And I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch." (Laughter) â€”President Bush, touring hurricane damage, Mobile, Ala., Sept. 2, 2005 (Source)

5) "Considering the dire circumstances that we have in New Orleans, virtually a city that has been destroyed, things are going relatively well." â€“FEMA Director Michael Brown, Sept. 1, 2005 (Source)

6) "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job." â€“President Bush, to FEMA director Michael Brown, while touring Hurricane-ravaged Mississippi, Sept. 2, 2005 (Source)

7) "I have not heard a report of thousands of people in the convention center who don't have food and water." â€“Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, on NPR's "All Things Considered," Sept. 1, 2005 (Source)

8) "Well, I think if you look at what actually happened, I remember on Tuesday morning picking up newspapers and I saw headlines, 'New Orleans Dodged the Bullet.' Because if you recall, the storm moved to the east and then continued on and appeared to pass with considerable damage but nothing worse." â€“Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, blaming media coverage for his failings, "Meet the Press," Sept. 4, 2005 (Source)

9) "I mean, you have people who don't heed those warnings and then put people at risk as a result of not heeding those warnings. There may be a need to look at tougher penalties on those who decide to ride it out and understand that there are consequences to not leaving.â€ â€“Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA), Sept. 6, 2005 (Source)

10) "You simply get chills every time you see these poor individuals...many of these people, almost all of them that we see are so poor and they are so black, and this is going to raise lots of questions for people who are watching this story unfold." â€“CNN's Wolf Blitzer, on New Orleans' hurricane evacuees, Sept. 1, 2005 (Source)

11) "What didn't go right?'" â€“President Bush, as quoted by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), after she urged him to fire FEMA Director Michael Brown "because of all that went wrong, of all that didn't go right" in the Hurricane Katrina relief effort (Source)

12) "Now tell me the truth boys, is this kind of fun?" â€“House Majority Leader Tom Delay (R-TX), to three young hurricane evacuees from New Orleans at the Astrodome in Houston (Source)

13) "We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did." â€“Rep. Richard Baker (R-LA) to lobbyists, as quoted in the Wall Street Journal (Source)

14) "Louisiana is a city that is largely under water." â€“Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, news conference, Sept. 3, 2005 (Source)

15) "I also want to encourage anybody who was affected by Hurricane Corina to make sure their children are in school." â€“First Lady Laura Bush, twice referring to a "Hurricane Corina" while speaking to children and parents in South Haven, Mississippi, Sept. 8, 2005 (Source)

16) "It's totally wiped out. ... It's devastating, it's got to be doubly devastating on the ground." â€“President Bush, turning to his aides while surveying Hurricane Katrina flood damage from Air Force One, Aug. 31, 2005 (Source)

17) "I believe the town where I used to come â€“ from Houston, Texas, to enjoy myself, occasionally too much â€“ will be that very same town, that it will be a better place to come to." â€“President Bush, on the tarmac at the New Orleans airport, Sept. 2, 2005 (Source)

18) "Last night, we showed you the full force of a superpower government going to the rescue." â€“MSNBC's Chris Matthews, Sept. 1, 2005 (Source)

19) "You know I talked to Haley Barbour, the governor of Mississippi yesterday because some people were saying, 'Well, if you hadn't sent your National Guard to Iraq, we here in Mississippi would be better off.' He told me 'I've been out in the field every single day, hour, for four days and no one, not one single mention of the word Iraq.' Now where does that come from? Where does that story come from if the governor is not picking up one word about it? I don't know. I can use my imagination." â€“Former President George Bush, who can give his imagination a rest, interview with CNNâ€™s Larry King, Sept. 5, 2005 (Source)

20) "We just learned of the convention center â€“ we being the federal government â€“ today." â€“FEMA Director Michael Brown, to ABC's Ted Koppel, Sept. 1, 2005, to which Koppel responded " Don't you guys watch television? Don't you guys listen to the radio? Our reporters have been reporting on it for more than just today." (Source)

21) "I don't want to alarm everybody that, you know, New Orleans is filling up like a bowl. That's just not happening." -Bill Lokey, FEMA's New Orleans coordinator, in a press briefing from Baton Rouge, Aug. 30, 2005 (Source)

22) "FEMA is not going to hesitate at all in this storm. We are not going to sit back and make this a bureaucratic process. We are going to move fast, we are going to move quick, and we are going to do whatever it takes to help disaster victims." --FEMA Director Michael Brown, Aug. 28, 2005 (Source)

23) "I don't make judgments about why people chose not to leave but, you know, there was a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans." â€“FEMA Director Michael Brown, arguing that the victims bear some responsibility, CNN interview, Sept. 1, 2005 (Source)

24) "I understand there are 10,000 people dead. It's terrible. It's tragic. But in a democracy of 300 million people, over years and years and years, these things happen." --GOP strategist Jack Burkman, on MSNBC's "Connected," Sept. 7, 2005 (Source)

25) "Thank President Clinton and former President Bush for their strong statements of support and comfort today. I thank all the leaders that are coming to Louisiana, and Mississippi and Alabama to our help and rescue. We are grateful for the military assets that are being brought to bear. I want to thank Senator Frist and Senator Reid for their extraordinary efforts. Anderson, tonight, I don't know if you've heard â€“ maybe you all have announced it -- but Congress is going to an unprecedented session to pass a $10 billion supplemental bill tonight to keep FEMA and the Red Cross up and operating." â€“Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA), to CNN's Anderson Cooper, Aug. 31, 2005, to which Cooper responded:

"I haven't heard that, because, for the last four days, I've been seeing dead bodies in the streets here in Mississippi. And to listen to politicians thanking each other and complimenting each other, you know, I got to tell you, there are a lot of people here who are very upset, and very angry, and very frustrated. And when they hear politicians slap â€“ you know, thanking one another, it just, you know, it kind of cuts them the wrong way right now, because literally there was a body on the streets of this town yesterday being eaten by rats because this woman had been laying in the street for 48 hours. And there's not enough facilities to take her up. Do you get the anger that is out here?" (Source)

Remembering the Obvious

2005-09-12T18:47:00.000-04:00

Ah yes, it's time for conservative blogs to remind us that we were attacked on September 11th, 2001, because there's a chance we might forget.

It's time for conservative blogs to fill their pages with heart-tugging pictures of scenes of destruction none of us are in any danger of forgetting. It's time for them to fill their pages with links to other conservative blogs reminding us that we were attacked on September 11th, lest we forget. It's time for them to lambast liberals for having the nerve to question power and criticize the party that actually controls the government while they spew forward seemingly never-ending talking points that say, in an apparently unnoticed contradictory pattern, that 1) the Bush Administration was in power for less than a year on September 11th, but 2) OBL was a threat all through the 90s and everything wrong with this country is Bill Clinton's fault. Catch that? OBL was such a big threat that they knew about him all through the 90s, yet once they obtained power, even though they knew he was a threat, they focused on Iraq.

It's time for conservative blogs to remind us that we can't simply wait for threats to materialize; that we must pre-emptively attack any country that we perceive to be a threat. It's time for conservative blogs to remind us that Democrats hate America and Americans because they had the nerve to question the Bush Administration on their "evidence" and "motivations" for going to war with Iraq. It's time for conservative blogs to remind America that Democrats hate soldiers and the armed forces in general; nevermind that Bush went to war with the army that Clinton created. It's time for them to remind America that any criticism of Rumsfeld, Cheney or Wolfowitz is in fact an attack on America itself, an attack on red-state values; that George Bush is in fact America and attacking the means is attacking the goal.

It's time for conservative neo-con kool-aid drinking war-mongerers to once again remind us that Iraq and Al-Qaeda are the same thing, that Iraq had WMD, that Old-Europe was wrong, that the world hates us because of liberals, that the war in Iraq is muddled and confused because of liberals, that seeing the death toll rise in Iraq is the fault of liberals, that the continuing changing reasoning for our going into Iraq is because of liberals, that soldiers' lack of armor, supplies and sufficient numbers is because of liberals.

It's time for conservative blogs to remind us that the GOP won the election and liberals should just shut up for the next four years, in fact bend over and take anything the GOP wants to say or do with glee while begging for more, that the liberal blue-states that had the nerve to send Democratic Congressmen to Washington were wrong to do so, every value they hold dear is wrong, everything they believe is what's wrong with this country, and those Democratic Congressmen they stupidly sent to Washington won't be allowed to participate in any relevant aspect of government anyway. It's time for them to remind us that the notion that this country is a Republic is only important when the Right is in the minority; that being in the majority means being in a Monarchy; that party comes before country, that it's better to turn down a good idea by a Democrat than give it due consideration, lest any crack in the armor of Conservatives are always right and Liberals are always wrong shine through.

Yes, it's time to remember 9/11. It's time to remember that the blind support given to the Bush Administration by the blue-states was taken advantage of and used by the GOP to drive more liberals out of power and reverse with unbridled disdain those policies of compassion and humanity that liberals believed in for so long and worked for so hard. It's time to remember what the GOP thinks of Democrats, how they treated and continue to treat Liberals, and the undending dirty tricks they used, and the think tanks and media institutions they've set up to continue pursuing these methods and their conservative agenda as a whole. It's time to remember that the Bush Administration will end in three years, and someone has to fill the void. It's time to remember that congressional elections are in 2006.

It's time to remember that no matter how tired you get, how beaten down you are, you can never stop fighting the good fight. It's time to remember that there is absolutely no room for any liberals in the current GOP's vision of government or their vision of America as a whole. It's time to remember that when you are attacked, you fight back.

Ann Coulter: foot in mouth

2005-09-11T06:40:00.000-04:00

Heh. From Think Progress:

Ann Coulter just called out MoveOn on Hannity & Colmes:

MoveOn.com is down protesting outside the White House. How about putting together some evacuee bags? How about actually helping out? Speaking of that, I think I’d like to hear a breakdown at the end of this, how much churches are contributing versus… MoveOn.com?

Last Thursday, as tens of thousands of families found themselves newly homeless, MoveOn launched an emergency national housing drive called HurricaneHousing.org. In just one week, over 235,000 beds have been offered to Katrina victims through the site.

See that's the problem with the Left. They expect me to use facts and tell the truth, and then have the nerve to call me on it when I do neither. How am I supposed to further my career of name-calling neo-fascism with them doing that?

Bush bungled Katrina crisis, say Britons

2005-09-11T01:17:00.000-04:00

Just read it. All your questions will be answered.

Because Private Corporations can do things so much better than Government

2005-09-11T01:14:00.000-04:00

CHICAGO - James McNerney, Boeing Co.'s new chief executive, is working hard to put behind him the defense-related scandals that bedeviled his two predecessors.

The Chicago-based aerospace manufacturer is hammering out a comprehensive settlement with the Justice Department, according to a person familiar with the matter. Under the agreement currently being discussed, Boeing would not face criminal charges, something companies have been keen to avoid since an obstruction of justice conviction led to the demise of accounting giant Arthur Andersen. The Supreme Court reversed Andersen's conviction earlier this year.

Boeing may end up paying a fine as large as $500 million, according to a report in Friday's Wall Street Journal. That would make it one of the biggest penalties levied on a U.S. company for misconduct.

Boeing's legal troubles date back to 2003, when the company was suspended from launching military rockets because it had thousands of proprietary documents from rival Lockheed Martin Corp. in its possession when bidding on the launch contracts.

The suspension was expected to be temporary, but it stretched to almost two years as Boeing became involved in a second defense-related scandal related to a $24 billion Air Force contract for aerial refueling tankers.

That contract was thrown out by Congress last year after a former Air Force procurement official, Darleen Druyun, admitted she had increased the price as a "parting gift" to Boeing, where she went to work after retiring.

In late 2003, Michael Sears, Boeing's chief financial officer, was fired after the company uncovered e-mails showing he had been wooing Druyun while she was still handling billions in Boeing contracts.

Federal prosecutors in Virginia charged Sears and Druyun with criminal conduct and both pleaded guilty.

Article here.

Conservative Pundits Reluctant to Criticize Bush's Katrina Response

2005-09-11T01:08:00.000-04:00

Shocked. Shocked. From Editor & Publisher:

The Bush administration has received a torrent of bi-partisan criticism for its initial response to Hurricane Katrina. But most conservative columnists have continued to go fairly easy on George W. Bush during the past week, according to an E&P survey.

One of the few conservative commentators to aim some strong remarks at the president was Kathleen Parker of the Orlando Sentinel and Tribune Media Services (TMS). "Bush did fail to act swiftly and unequivocally," she wrote in her column Wednesday. "When he did act, at least initially, it was without authority, without competence and -- never more important -- without apparent empathy. ... [He] caused even supporters to cringe with every ill-chosen word. ... He let slip the rarest of opportunities -- that of saving human life and the nation's pride. By his performance in this time of extreme stress, Bush may have revealed a truer self than we were meant to see."

Parker did note that local and state officials deserved some blame, too.

Pat Buchanan, who has criticized Bush at times in the past, wrote last Friday about what the president would soon face. The Creators Syndicate columnist predicted the "attacks" on Bush would "run along these lines: First, he was out of touch in Crawford, not alert to what was coming -- and, indeed, photographed fooling with a guitar the day the storm hit. Second, despite the investment of scores of billions, the Gulf Coast, on his watch, was unprepared for a Category 4 hurricane. Third, when the need arose for the Louisiana and Mississippi National Guard to save the poor of those states, and defend lives and property after the storm, 7,000 Guardsmen were not on the Gulf of Mexico, but in the Persian Gulf. ... And there are print and TV allegations that funds allocated to strengthen the levees were diverted or cut by the Bush administration."

But many other conservative columnists criticized Bush mildly, if they criticized him at all. In some cases, they placed much of the blame on others for the post-hurricane situation.

"No doubt Mr. Bush could have thought of means more quickly to take center stage as dispenser of life and hope. Yet dramatic pauses at historical moments happen," William F. Buckley Jr. of Universal Press Syndicate wrote in a Tuesday column. He devoted the rest of his piece to topics such as criticizing New York Times/New York Times News Service columnist Nicholas Kristof for criticizing Bush, discussing why some New Orleans residents didn't leave the city, and listing the various ways the federal government eventually helped New Orleans after the hurricane.

Cal Thomas of TMS paraphrased former Louisiana Gov. Mike Foster, a Republican, as saying "the federal government must share some of the blame for not being properly prepared for the storm." But the Wednesday column didn't criticize Bush directly, and said corruption among local officials in New Orleans was partly to blame for the levees not being properly maintained.

Also writing Wednesday, Jonah Goldberg of TMS acknowledged "shortcomings" in the federal response to the hurricane, but focused much of his rhetorical fire on criticizing musician Kanye West for criticizing Bush.

David Brooks of The New York Times and New York Times News Service wrote Sunday that "nobody took control" in New Orleans. But he never mentioned Bush by name. In today's column, he focused on how to rebuild the city.

Thomas Sowell of Creators wrote Tuesday about how crimes committed by some New Orleans residents after the hurricane illustrated "the moral devastation of our times." He had nothing to say about Bush.

Mona Charen, in her Creators column of last Friday, also discussed the behavior of some New Orleans residents rather than the behavior of Bush.

And Debra Saunders of the San Francisco Chronicle and Creators devoted the first few paragraphs of her hurricane-related column Sunday to expressing exasperation with "Bush haters."

Some conservative columnists have apparently not yet commented on the hurricane and the Bush administration's response to it. For instance, Ann Coulter devoted the Aug. 31 and Sept. 7 installments of her weekly Universal feature to a two-part series lampooning Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.). And George Will wrote this week in his Washington Post Writers Group newspaper column about William Rehnquist and the late Chief Justice's possible successor, John Roberts.

Will did write about the hurricane in a column -- titled "Leviathan in Louisiana" -- for the Sept. 12 edition of Newsweek magazine. He mentioned "the raping, looting, and gunfire" in New Orleans, but did not discuss the way Bush and the federal government responded to Katrina.

Article here.

John Bolton: Square Peg in a Round (world) Hole

2005-09-11T01:02:00.000-04:00

The Guardian Limited (UK) has this. Intro:

The British government is mounting a huge diplomatic effort this weekend to prevent the biggest-ever summit of world leaders, designed to tackle poverty and overhaul the United Nations, ending in chaos.

The Guardian has learned that Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, has made a personal plea to his American counterpart, Condoleezza Rice, for the US to withdraw opposition to plans for wholesale reform of the UN. He has asked Ms Rice to rein in John Bolton, the US ambassador to the world body.

Article here.

U.S. won't ban media from New Orleans searches

2005-09-11T00:49:00.000-04:00

Well, that idea didn't last long. Not long at all. In fact, it fell apart at the first hint of a legal challenge:

HOUSTON, Texas (CNN) -- Rather than fight a lawsuit by CNN, the federal government abandoned its effort Saturday to prevent the media from reporting on the recovery of the dead in New Orleans.

Joint Task Force Katrina "has no plans to bar, impede or prevent news media from their news gathering and reporting activities in connection with the deceased Hurricane Katrina victim recovery efforts," said Col. Christian E. deGraff, representing the task force.

U.S. District Court Judge Keith Ellison issued a temporary restraining order Friday against a "zero access" policy announced earlier in the day by Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, who is overseeing the federal relief effort in the city, and Terry Ebbert, the city's homeland security director.

In explaining the ban, Ebbert said, "we don't think that's proper" to let members of the media view the bodies. (we should only let the media view freedom parades and carefully constructed photo-ops. oh, and puppies.)

Army Lt. Col. Richard Steele, a member of Honore's staff, told CNN Saturday night that Honore was partly misunderstood. Steele said Honore meant that no media would be allowed to be imbedded with teams recovering bodies. However, recovery groups would not prevent reporters from doing their jobs, he added.

"He did not say we're going to ban anybody. We're not going to restrict them from any public areas whatsoever," Steele said. "We don't have any legal recourse to do any kind of law enforcement or anything like that in our role (but it wasn't going to stop us from trying). So the only thing we do is we can control who goes with us; on our aircraft and on our trucks and in our boats, if that applies."

The judge was to consider granting a permanent injunction Saturday when the government announced its decision not to enforce the "zero access" policy.

Reacting to the decision, CNN News Group President Jim Walton said, "We are pleased by the decision. The free flow of information is vital for a free society." (though dangerous to the Bush Administration).

In an e-mail to CNN staff on Friday, Walton said the network filed the the lawsuit to "prohibit any agency from restricting its ability to fully and fairly cover" the hurricane victim recovery process.

"As seen most recently from war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq, from tsunami-ravaged South Asia and from Hurricane Katrina's landfall along the Gulf," Walton wrote, "CNN has shown that it is capable of balancing vigorous reporting with respect for private concerns."

CNN filed suit against Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown, arguing that the officials who announced the decision were acting on FEMA's behalf.

"For an agency to unilaterally ban all coverage of a major component of its governmental function, that is, recovery of the deceased victims of the tragedy, is unprecedented," CNN argued in its legal brief. "Instead, the agency has made a subjective, content-based determination that publicizing the operation would be 'without dignity.'"

CNN's brief argued, "It is not the place of government to replace its own internal judgment for that of a free and independent media."

Because of controversy about how FEMA and other agencies handled the disaster response, CNN lawyers argued, "it is even more vitally important for the public, Congress and the administration to have an independent view of the conduct of this important phase of the operation."

The Bush Administration: hapless victim

2005-09-11T00:41:00.000-04:00

From the (wing-nuts) Patriots at Powerline:

Here's my point: whatever you think of the mechanics of a particular poll (if it says Bush has low ratings then it's flawed or liberally biased), the direction of President Bush's poll numbers is clear. And it seems clear that Hurricane Katrina, and the outrageous attacks that the Democrats have pursued over the past week (attacks like stop playing that guitar while people are dying and do something please), have dealt him, and the Republican Party, another blow. I see no evidence that the Democrats are paying a price for their dishonorable tactics (tactics like exercising free speech and expressing opinions. Be afraid.). And they won't pay a price, unless the Republicans start defending themselves and attacking the Democrats the way they deserve to be attacked (and perhaps the party that's actually in charge of the entire government could shoulder some of the blame as well. Just a thought.). The "turn the other cheek" approach that the administration has followed for years--don't respond to attacks, no matter how unfair, just try to ride out the news cycle and move on--has resulted in one needless wound after another, and cumulatively they have now damaged President Bush's standing with the public, likely beyond repair (yep, the GOP Political machine is structured around the "turn the other cheek" notion. Karl Rove and Fox News are just figments of Democrats' imaginations).

For those of you wondering what the term "drinking the kool-aid" means, here's an example.

Shhhh

2005-09-08T06:24:00.000-04:00

One of our favorite (kool-aid drinking) right-wing blogs has been suspiciously absent in posting on the aftermath of Hurrican Katrina. They did manage one post though, that started out criticizing FEMA and ended up criticizing..... Nancy Pelosi.

Mabye it's because of stuff like this:

"At a news conference, Pelosi, D-Calif., said Bush's choice for head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency had ''absolutely no credentials.''She related that she had urged Bush at the White House on Tuesday to fire Michael Brown...

''He said 'Why would I do that?''' Pelosi said.'''I said because of all that went wrong, of all that didn't go right last week.'

And he said 'What didn't go right?''

"Oblivious, in denial, dangerous,'' she added."

How much you wanna bet the Bush handlers won't let him anywhere near an unscripted open mic for the next few days?

The Blame Game

2005-09-08T06:07:00.000-04:00

Jane goes to town:

MR. McCLELLAN: The time for bickering and blame-gaming is later. The time for helping people in the region is now.

No time for blame. That is unless you are Kathleen Blanco, female Democratic governor of Louisiana and obvious goat for BushCo. as the crack disaster management team whose sole mission is to save Preznit Arabian Horse Fluffer's ass goes to work. In that case a "senior Bush official" is running around telling everyone who will listen that Blanco did not declare a state of emergency and therefore no federal help was forthcoming. Had professional water carriers Newsweek and the Washington Post bothered to -- oh, I don't know, check the fucking State of Louisiana website -- they would've discovered she did so on August 26, 2005.

No time for blame. That is unless you are Democratic New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, who had the audacity to speak out against BushCo. indifference and inefficiency in the wake of the storm. Monday morning quarterback, New Orleans evacuation expert and GOP bootlick Lou Dobbs goes to work and lays the blame at Nagin's feet, because of course, as Mayor of New Orleans, Nagin had the resources to instantly get three hundred thousand people out of the city and didn't use them. Oh and then there was that $71 million in levee reconstruction that Nagin slashed to pay for his war in Iraq.

Right. No time for blame. That is unless you were one of the people who "chose" to stay behind, and created so many problems for poor FEMA. So says United States Senatorial Embarrassment Rick Santorum, running for re-election in 2006 on the all-idiot ticket, who thinks anyone so lazy and irresponsible should be fined:

I mean, you have people who don't heed those warnings and then put people at risk as a result of not heeding those warnings. There may be a need to look at tougher penalties on those who decide to ride it out and understand that there are consequences to not leaving.

[snip]

Right now rumor has it that FEMA is preparing for as many as 40,000 dead. I really do not think people in this country are prepared for those kind of numbers. I think people are only paying half attention to this and still have faith in the government that even though there may have been a few gaffs, they would not have let that many people die.

Article here.

After five years of this stuff you'd think the Right-Wing Spin Machine would catch on that, well, we've caught on. Bush can do no wrong. Ever.

Firefighters put to... um... use

2005-09-08T05:50:00.000-04:00

Salon reports:

From all across the nation, local fire departments have sent firefighters -- many of them trained in emergency medicine and search-and-rescue techniques -- to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina. The Federal Emergency Management Agency requested the help. But when the firefighters arrived in Atlanta, loaded down with the firefighting gear FEMA told them to bring, they were sent to a hotel to wait. Some of them have been waiting for three or four days now. Some have been assigned to sit through an eight-hour class on topics that included sexual harassment. And some have been dispatched to the disaster area to work as human props behind George W. Bush as he toured the destruction.

We've said this before lately, and we'll say it again: We're not making this up.

As the Los Angeles Times reports, "Hundreds of firefighters who volunteered to help rescue victims of Hurricane Katrina have instead been playing cards, taking classes on the Federal Emergency Management Agency's history and lounging at an Atlanta airport hotel for days. 'On the news every night you hear [hurricane victims say], "How come everybody forgot us?"' said Joseph Manning, a firefighter from Washington, Pa. 'We didn't forget. We're stuck in Atlanta drinking beer.'"

Well, not just drinking beer. The Salt Lake Tribune reports that FEMA put a team of 50 firefighters on a flight to Louisiana Monday morning. Their mission: Stand beside Bush as he toured the devastation -- just possibly not the best use for highly trained emergency workers, and a job we thought was obsolete in the digital age anyway.

FEMA defends the use -- or nonuse -- of the firefighters, saying that their chiefs knew they were being sent to the Gulf Coast to work as community-relations officers for FEMA. Apparently, that job entails working as human props and passing out FEMA's phone number. "There are all of these guys with all of this training and we're sending them out to hand out a phone number," an Oregon firefighter told the Tribune.

On Monday, the Tribune says, some firefighters began to take off their FEMA-issued T-shirts in protest. A FEMA spokesman responded by questioning the firefighters' willingness to help in a time of need. "I would go back and ask the firefighter to revisit his commitment to FEMA, to firefighting and to the citizens of this country," FEMA spokeswoman Mary Hudak told the Tribune .

Article here. Hat tip: Steve.

How many people were still waiting to be rescued while these guys were forgotten, used as props for a political photo-op, or used to pass out notes? How many people died? Is this the response we can expect after a terrorist attack?

Damage Control

2005-09-08T05:29:00.000-04:00

Political Damage, that is. MSNBC's Brian WIlliams blogs about his trip to the French Quarter. He reports on the implementation of the new "don't photograph the dead or the damage" mandate by (the Bush Administration) FEMA. Highlights:

While we were attempting to take pictures of the National Guard (a unit from Oklahoma) taking up positions outside a Brooks Brothers on the edge of the Quarter, the sergeant ordered us to the other side of the boulevard. The short version is: there won't be any pictures of this particular group of guard soldiers on our newscast tonight. Rules (or I suspect in this case an order on a whim) like those do not HELP the palpable feeling that this area is somehow separate from the United States.

At that same fire scene, a police officer from out of town raised the muzzle of her weapon and aimed it at members of the media... obvious members of the media... armed only with notepads. Her actions (apparently because she thought reporters were encroaching on the scene) were over the top and she was told. There are automatic weapons and shotguns everywhere you look. It's a stance that perhaps would have been appropriate during the open lawlessness that has long since ended on most of these streets. Someone else points out on television as I post this: the fact that the National Guard now bars entry (by journalists) to the very places where people last week were barred from LEAVING (The Convention Center and Superdome) is a kind of perverse and perfectly backward postscript to this awful chapter in American history.

read on

Combine that with the ban on photographing flag-draped coffins returning from Iraq and it's official: No one has died under the Bush Administration. Ever.

Two Bush 2000 Florida recount aides were rewarded with top FEMA posts

2005-09-08T05:22:00.000-04:00

Shocked. Shocked. Highlights::

Reversing an eight-year crusade to rid the now-embattled Federal Emegency Management Agency of political patronage, a newly elected George W. Bush in 2001 named two key players in his Florida recount fight to important FEMA posts.

Neither man, Jacksonville attorney Reynold Hoover (pictured at left) and Miami lawyer Mark Wallace, had any experience in emergency management before they were named by the Bush administration to FEMA, now under fire for its botched response to Hurricane Katrina. Hoover, a longtime "explosives expert" with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms who became a lawyer in 1996, is still with FEMA as its director of national security coordination. Wallace left the Bush administration in 2004 to become deputy manager of the president's re-election campaign, and is now a lobbyist.

They are two more names to add to the list of political appointees and out-and-out hacks at FEMA. Many are calling for the firing of agency chief Michael Brown, the ousted head of a horse association who was hired at FEMA in 2001 along with his college roommate, top Bush advisor Joe Allbaugh. And it was reported yesterday that FEMA's No. 2 and No. 3 officials, Patrick Rhode and Scott Morris, are also former campaign aides.
Consider this quote:

"FEMA is widely viewed as a 'dumping ground,' a turkey farm, if you will, where large numbers of positions exist that can be conveniently and quietly filled by political appointment," the preliminary report said. "This has led to a situation where top officials, having little or no experience in disaster or emergency management, are creating substantial morale problems among careerists and professionals. "

Appropriate in the wake of the agency's bungled efforts over the last 10 days in Louisiana and Mississippi? Yes -- but the above quote is from 1992, during the administration of George H.W. Bush. It came from a preliminary report from the staff of the House Appropriations Committee, and it was written before FEMA came under fire that year for a tardy response to Florida's Hurricane Andrew. (Note: Any article not linked came from the Nexis search engine.)

The Andrew debacle was one of many factors in the first President Bush's failed re-election bid. They say that good government is good politics, and so when Bill Clinton arrived at the White House in 1993, he made a serious effort to rid FEMA of political hackery.
Clinton hired a professional, James Lee Witt, to run the agency and that May Witt told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee, according to a Washington Post article, "that FEMA 'will not be doing business as usual' and that he was committed to making his organization 'one of the most respected agencies in this nation.'

Did he succeed? Here's what the Atlanta Journal-Constitution wrote in a January 1996 editorial:

FEMA has developed a sterling reputation for delivering disaster- relief services, a far cry from its abysmal standing before James Lee Witt took its helm in 1993.
How did Witt turn FEMA around so quickly? Well, he is the first director of the agency to have emergency-management experience. He stopped the staffing of the agency by political patronage. He removed layers of bureaucracy. Most important, he instilled in the agency a spirit of preparedness, of service to the customer, of willingness to listen to ideas of local and state officials to make the system work better.

But if Clinton and Witt stopped the staffing of FEMA by political patronage, George W. Bush re-started it within days of taking the oath of office -- rewarding some of the people who'd helped him become president in the grueling 2000 Florida recount.

read on

Qualifications? We don't need no stinking qualifications!

Heh.

2005-09-08T05:14:00.000-04:00

from Tbogg:

After this little altercation I think David Gregory is about one more "the President is focused" away from grabbing Scottie McClellan and repeatedly slamming little Scottie's head on the podium while screaming, "Just answer one question! One...fucking...question!".

Yep. It's starting to look like the MSM is finding their spines (not the first word I thought of). See, there's ambiguity when it comes to highly classified reports on WMD about a country on the other side of the globe. But a flooded city and thousands of destroyed lives while the President was playing guitar, that's more difficult to spin.